Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
THE COMET KINGS
by Edmond Hamilton
Trapped in the Depths of Halley's Comet, the
Futuremen Battle Fourth-Dimensional Monsters in a Titanic
Struggle to Save the System's Solar Energy!
Captain Future parried the blow by a swift jab of his own dielectric blade. (Chap. IX)
CHAPTER I
Vanishing Spaceships
ILLIONS of miles out beyond Jupiter, the bat-
tered old space-freighter Arcturion plodded
through the void.
M
"I'd just as soon walk to Uranus!" disgustedly ex-
claimed Norton, the young second mate. "I wish I'd got
a berth on a passenger liner. They don't spend weeks
crawling along between planets."
Brower, the veteran first mate, smiled tolerantly at
the impatient young officer.
"You'll get used to it," he predicted. "Me, I kind of
like it. It's restful, plugging along day after day through
these big empty spaces."
"But nothing ever happens!" the younger man com-
1
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
plained, "There's never even a close brush with a mete-
or swarm. I can't stand this deadly monotony."
Ironically, it was at that moment that the catastrophe
broke upon them.
The plodding, droning Arcturion suddenly seemed
to go crazy in space. Its steelite hull plates screamed
beneath the grasp of unearthly forces. The ship hurtled
suddenly sideward in space, as though it had,, been
gripped by a giant, invisible hand.
The sharp shock of that invisible grasp was so pow-
erful that it nullified the Arcturicy's artificial gravita-
tion. Young Norton felt himself hurled against the cab-
in wall, and his brain saw stars.
His last sensation was of mysterious and mighty
forces sweeping the old freighter at undreamable speed
through the void. Then he knew nothing at all.
That was only the first disappearance.
"But there aren't any uncharted meteor swarms out
in that sector of space, sir!"
The man who spoke was a Martian who wore the
dark uniform of the Planet Patrol. He wore a captain's
insignia, too, for Tzan Thar was head of this Jovopolis
Maintenance Division.
His red, solemn face was wrinkled with dismay and
there was anxiety in his large-pupilled black eyes, as he
protested to the Venusian superior officer who looked
at him out of the square televisor screen.
"Don't try to evade responsibility, Captain Thar!"
snapped the higher officer. "You're in charge of the
Maintenance Division for that sector of space. You've
been lax in your meteor-sweeping, and a score of ships
have come to grief as a result.
"Twenty-three ships gone, since that old freighter
Arcturion first disappeared! And every one of them
vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, and hasn't re-
ported since."
"I can't understand it any more than you can sir,"
said the Martian captain. "We swept all lanes in that
sector only a few weeks ago."
"Then you missed plenty of meteors!" rapped his su-
perior. "You get out there with every sweep you've got
­ and be fast about it! I want that sector cleaned up at
once. And see if you can't find the wreckage of those
ships."
The connection was broken. Tzan Thar turned and
looked helplessly at his junior officers-lanky Earthmen,
squat Jovians, bronzed Mercurians.
"You all heard him," the Martian captain said wor-
riedly. "You know we swept that sector thoroughly,
that every space-lane was clear. But something's drifted
in that haft been wrecking ships. We've got to get
busy!"
Six broad-beamed, dumpy meteor-sweeps soon rose
up through the thin sunlight of Jupiter, blasted their tor-
tuous path out through the maze of moons, and then
laid a course outward in space.
The six ships, built with steelite walls of massive
strength, droned steadily out through the starry void.
Their far-ranging spotter beams fanned space ahead.
Wherever those beams encountered meteors or other
debris, they would be reflected back to indicate the lo-
cation. Then the sweeps would advance and destroy the
meteors by concentrated atom-blasts.
UT their spotter apparatus found no trace of mete-
ors as they droned out along the space-lane. Cap-
tain Tzan Thar became deeply puzzled.
B
"I can't figure it," he admitted anxiously. "There are
no meteors in this sector. There isn't even any wreckage
from all those vanished ships."
His immediate superior, a young Mercurian, looked
uneasy.
"It's queer, all right ­"
Cataclysm suddenly interrupted their discussion. A
colossal, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize their
heavy ship. They were flung to the floor as that giant,
unseen hand scooped up all six great meteor-sweeps.
Nor did the tragic disappearances cease.
"Fifty-two ships Do you hear that-fifty-two ships!
Freighters, liners tankers, even meteor-sweeps. This
can't go on!"
North Bonnet's face was agitated as he paced to and
fro in his office, on a high level of Earth's Government
Tower at New York. It was a comparatively small of-
fice, yet it was the very brain and nerve center of the
far-flung Planet Patrol.
Halk Anders, commander of the Patrol, sat at his
desk and said nothing. His bulldog face was stolidly
grim as he hunched there, staring out through the win-
dow at the soaring towers and gleaming lights of this
night-shrouded metropolis of the Solar System.
"Commander, something's got to be done," North
Bonnet continued vehemently. "Those ships held thou-
sands of people, millions of dollars' worth of cargoes.
Shipping companies, planetary officials, anxious rela-
tives are all besieging the Government. You've got to
send cruisers out there to stop these disasters!"
Halk Anders did not turn from his grim contempla-
tion at the lights of New York, as he answered.
"We sent two Patrol cruisers into that sector to in-
vestigate weeks ago after our meteor-sweeps vanished."
"You did" Bonnet said hopefully. "What did they re-
port?"
They didn't report anything," the commander
replied. "They never came back ­ just disappeared like
the others."
The Government official was appalled.
"Patrol cruisers disappeared, too?"
Anders nodded.
"Yes. We kept it quiet because we didn't want to add
to the general alarm."
"But what are we going to do about it?" Bonnel
2
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
asked dismayedly.
"I've already done something," the commander told
him. "I sent out another cruiser to investigate. Two of
my crack agents are aboard. You know them ­ old Mar-
shal Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall.
"It may look queer, sending a girl," he added quick-
ly. "But Joan's not only the smartest agent of our secret
investigation division ­ she knows the space-ways bet-
ter than most men. And as for Ezra Gurney ­ well, he
knows the whole System like the back of his hand."
"Have they found out anything yet?" Bonnel de-
manded eagerly.
Halk Antlers shrugged stolidly.
"I don't know. They were to report by televisor to-
day. I've been expecting their call any minute."
But though the two men waited expectantly, it was
not until four hours later that the televisor on the desk
buzzed sharply. From it came the urgent voice of a
headquarters switchboard man.
"Cruiser Ferronia calling, Commander. Agent Ran-
dall to speak to you."
"Switch her on at once!" snapped Halk Anders.
N the square glass screen of the televisor appeared
the vivid face of a dark, pretty girl. Joan Randall's
eyes were shadowed with anxiety as she spoke to them
across the millions of miles of space.
I
"Ferronia reporting, Commander," she said rapidly.
"We've been cruising back and forth over the whole
sector in which those ships vanished. And we've found
nothing."
"Nothing?" echoed Anders incredulously. "You
mean ­"
"I mean just that. There's nothing here but empty
space!" Joan Randall declared. "There's not a meteor in
this whole region big enough to wreck a ship. Further-
more, there's no sign whatever of any wreckage of all
those ships. It's just as though space itself swallowed
them up!"
The white head of an old man appeared over the
girl's shoulder. Marshal Ezra Gurney's wrinkled face
and faded blue eyes were bleak as he corroborated the
girl's report.
"It sounds cursed queer, but it's so," he told the com-
mander. "This is the dangdest, most puzzlin' mystery I
ever ­"
At that moment, something happened. It happened
so swiftly that neither Commander Anders nor North
Bonnel get more than a glimpse of it.
They saw something like a blaze of white across the
televisor screen, instantly blotting out the suddenly
alarmed faces of Joan and Ezra. And then the televisor
had gone dark.
Anders jabbed its call-button.
"Joan! Ezra! What's happened?"
There was no answer. Anders flung a switch and
shot an order to the headquarters operator.
"Contact the Ferronia again at once!"
Ten minutes later, the switchboard division called
back.
No success at all, sir. The Ferronia simply doesn't
answer."
Anders slowly turned and looked at the Government
official, and his bulldog face was heavier than ever.
"It happened to Joan and Ezra, right in front of our
eyes," he muttered. "Whatever struck at the other ships
3
Captain Future smashed desperately to close the fateful door as
the Allus advanced viciously toward him and Joan. (Chap. XV)
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
struck at theirs, too."
Bonnel was appalled.
"But what was it? There was nothing but a blaze of
force in the screen!"
Anders shook his leonine head helplessly.
"I can't figure it. I thought I'd seen everything in
space but this is something new, and dangerous."
He rose to his feet.
"There is nothing to do but to send a full squadron
of Patrol cruisers out there. And if they disappear, too
­"
"'There'll be a panic that will cripple space travel in
the whole System," breathed Bonnel, his face pale.
Then his eyes flashed.
"Commander, this mystery can't be met by force. It's
a job for someone who can scientifically ferret out what
is really happening. Someone who can use every re-
source of science to solve the riddle."
Halk Anders understood this at once.
"You're thinking of Captain Future?"
The official nodded emphatically.
"If anybody could crack this mystery, that scientific
wizard and his Futuremen could."
"Maybe so," muttered the commander. "Future has
plenty of tricks the rest of us don't know. But if you call
him in, will he come?"
"Will he come?" echoed North Bonnel. He strode
toward the televisor. "Why, Ezra Gurney is one of his
oldest friends, and as for Joan ­ you ought to know
what Future thinks of her!"
"Will he come? He'll split space itself getting here
when he learns that Joan and Ezra are in danger!"
CHAPTER II
Riddle of the World
SMALL, streamlined ship climbed froze the bar-
ren, airless surface of the Moon, with rockets
blazing white fire, it shot toward Earth.
A
Had there been any observer, he would have known
at once that it was the ship of Captain Future and the
Futuremen. For only those four famous adventurers
lived upon the lifeless, forbidding satellite. Their un-
derground laboratory-home beneath Tycho crater was
the only habitation.
The little ship flew toward Earth at a speed no other
craft could match, and which no ordinary pilot would
have attempted. It screamed down through the darkness
of the shadowed planet, toward the blazing pinnacles of
New York. Like a swooping falcon, it came down to
rest on the truncated tip of the looming Government
Tower.
Down in Planet Patrol headquarters, North Bonnel
was still restlessly pacing his office as Halk Anders sat
grimly silent.
"If Future can't solve this thing, nobody can!" Bon-
nel was saying jerkily. "And if ships keep on vanishing
like that ­"
A clear voice interrupted him:
"What's this about vanishing ships? And what's hap-
pened to Joan and Ezra?"
Bonnel and Halk Anders both spun around. A door
had opened silently behind them. And in it were four
figures.
"Captain Future!" exclaimed Bonnel. He breathed in
gusty relief. "By heaven, I'm glad you and the Future-
men got here so quickly!"
Curt Newton ignored the warm greeting of these two
old acquaintances as he strode into the office. His
brows were knitted in a frown.
"You said in your call that Joan and Ezra were in
trouble. What is it, Bonnel? And why didn't you call me
before?"
Captain Future ­ as the whole System called Curtis
Newton ­ towered a full head above Bonnel. His tall,
ranged figure, clad now in a gray zipper-suit, hinted of
strength and speed. And the heavy proton pistol belted
to his waist recalled that he was not only the famous
Wizard Science, but also the most renowned fighting
planeteer in the System.
Beneath Curt's torchlike mop of red hair, his spac-
etanned handsome face and clear gray eyes now mir-
rored an urgent anxiety. He had few friends, but those
few were very close to him. Marshal Ezra Gurney was
one of the oldest. And even closer to his heart was the
gay, gallant girl agent whose safety now was threat-
ened.
"Where are Joan and Ezra?" he repeated.
"We don't know," Bonnel answered helplessly.
"What do you mean ­ you don't know?" cried one of
the Futuremen. "Devils of space, is this a joke?"
The three Futuremen who were Curt Newton's faith-
ful, lifelong comrades made a striking contrast to their
tall, red-haired young leader. Otho, the one who had
just spoken, was a lithe, white, rubbery-looking figure
of a man, with a devil of fierce recklessness in his slant
green eyes. He seemed almost an ordinary man, but was
not. Otho had been created in a laboratory, long ago.
He was a synthetic man, an android.
Grag, second of the Futuremen, was even more ex-
traordinary. He was an intelligent robot ­ a giant metal
figure towering seven feet high, with photoelectric eyes
gleaming from the bulbous metal head that shielded his
mechanical brain. Strongest of all beings vas Grag!
The third and strangest was Simon Wright, the
Brain. He was just that ­ a living human brain, dwelling
in a transparent metal case whose constantly repurified
serums kept him alive. His glass lens-eyes were watch-
ing, his microphone ears listening, as he hung poised
upon the pale beams of force by which he could move
through the air at will.
4
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"You must have some idea where Joan and Ezra are!
Otho was exclaiming impatiently to Bonnet. "Or did
you bring us all the way from the Moon just for a silly
hoax?"
"Shut up, Otho," Curt Newton ordered. His gray
eyes bored into Bonnel's face. "Tell us what happened."
ONNEL told them, as briefly as he could. He told
of the scores of slips that for weeks has mysteri-
ously vanished in that sector beyond Jupiter, of the as-
signing of Joan Randall and old Marshal Gurney to in-
vestigate, and of the inexplicable interruption of their
televisor call.
B
"The thing has me baffled, Captain Future," con-
fessed Halk Anders when Bonnel finished.
Curt's eyes were hard. "We're going out there at
once and find out what did happen to them," he said
sharply. He turned toward the door. Otho's slant green
eyes flamed with excitement as he followed. And Grag,
too, followed Captain Future silently. But the Brain's
metallic voice held them back. "Wait a moment, Curtis.
I know you're worried about Joan, but getting into too
big a hurry won't help us. We need to know more about
this."
Otho groaned exasperatedly. "Every time we're in a
devil of a hurry, Simon has to delay to plan things out."
There was truth in the charge. The cold, almost
emotionless mind of the Brain was always more careful
in planning action than were the others. That was natu-
ral, for the Brain was the oldest of them all.
The Brain could look back across the years to the
time before Curt Newton had been born. He had been
an ordinary man, at that time. He had been Doctor Si-
mon Wright, brilliant, aging scientist of a great Earth
university, dying of an incurable ailment.
His body had died but his brain had lived on. His
living brain had been surgically removed and implanted
in the artificial metal serum-case which he still inhabit-
ed. That had been done by Roger Newton, his gifted
young colleague in biological research.
Soon after that, threats to their scientific secrets had
caused the Brain, Roger Newton and Newton's bride to
leave Earth in search of a safe refuge. They had found
such a haven on the lifeless Moon, where they built an
underground laboratory-home beneath the floor of Ty-
cho crater.
In that strange home, Curt Newton had been born.
And in it, the science of the two experimenters had cre-
ated Otho, the android, and Grag, the robot.
Death had come to Roger Newton and his young
wife, soon after that. The orphaned infant they had left
had been adopted by the three strange beings, the Brain,
the robot and the android. These three had faithfully
reared the boy to brilliant manhood, giving him the un-
paralleled education that in time had made him an un-
surpassed master of science.
Ever since Curt Newton had begun to use his great
powers against the evil-doers of the System, his three
former guardians had followed him as the Futuremen.
"Before we go out there," the Brain was saying de-
liberately in his metallic voice, "I want all available
data about the spaceships that disappeared. I want to
know the route each ship was on, its date of departure,
its approximate cruising speed, and about when it van-
ished."
Captain Future's gray eyes showed quick under-
standing.
"I see what you mean, Simon. By calculating the
courses and speeds of the ships, we may be able to fix
the approximate point in space where they vanished."
Halk Anders gave rapid orders into an office inter-
phone. The file of data requested by the Brain was soon
brought to him.
"We'll call you the moment we learn anything out
there," Curt called back earnestly from the door to the
two officials. "Come on, Grag."
HEY hurried up the little private stair to the land-
ing deck atop Government Tower, Otho taking the
steps three at a time, Grag's metal limbs clanking, the
Brain gliding silently at Curt Newton's side.
T
Up there in the windy darkness atop the tower, the
small ship of the Futuremen crowded the deck. The
four boarded the Comet in a minute, the airlock door
was slammed shut, the cyclotrons started, and Captain
Future grasped the space-stick in the crowded little con-
trol room.
He sent the Comet climbing steeply up to the stars
with a burst of white flame from its tail rocket tubes. It
angled sharply above the glittering towers of New York
to fling itself space-yard amid a roar of splitting atmo-
sphere, as Curt's foot pressed the cyc-pedal.
Presently they were out in clear space, Earth reced-
ing rapidly behind them as Curt Newton built up the
speed of the Comet to fantastic velocity. Like a man-
made meteor gone mad, the ship of the Futuremen hur-
tled outward. The bright speck of Jupiter gleamed
ahead, a little to the right.
Far out to the left, well beyond the orbit of the
monarch world, glowed the brilliant splendor of Hal-
ley's Comet. The great comet was plunging Sunward
again in its vast, seventy-five-year orbit. Its giant coma
or head shone like a blazing world, the long tail stream-
ing backward.
"The ships all disappeared in the quadrant ahead,
between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus," Curt told
Otho thoughtfully. "Since all space-lanes have been re-
routed to give Halley's comet a wide berth, it cuts down
the area that we must search."
There came a sudden booming cry of alarm from
Grag, back in the main cabin.
"Someone has planted an atomic bomb on this
5
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
ship!"
Springing up in alarm, Curt Newton slammed the
switch of the automatic pilot and bounded back with
Otho into the cabin. This main cabin of the Comet was
more laboratory than living quarters. It was crowded
with telescopic, spectroscopic, electrical and other ap-
paratus. There was a table at its center over which the
Brain had been poised, studying a mass of calculations.
Grag was standing, pointing his metal arm in alarm
at a small, square black case in a corner. It exactly re-
sembled a "live" atomic bomb.
"Don't touch it, Chief ­ it may let go any minute!"
the big robot cried. "Somebody must have put it in the
ship while we were out."
Captain Future moved swiftly toward the bomb,
snatched it up and tore open the airlock door to throw
the thing out. But the "bomb" suddenly writhed and
changed form in his hands.
It changed with swift protean flow of outline, into a
small, living animal. It was a doughy-looking little
white beast, with big, solemn eyes that looked up inno-
cently at Curt.
"It's my pet, Oog!" cried Otho. He jumped forward
in alarm. "Don't throw him out!"
Curt disgustedly tossed the little animal to its mas-
ter.
"It isn't his fault," Otho said protectively. "You
know Oog laves to imitate anything he sees. That's his
nature."
Oog was cuddling contentedly in his master's arms.
The little beast was a meteor-mimic, a species of aster-
oidal creature which had developed the art of protective
coloration to great lengths. This species had the power
of shifting its bodily cells to shape itself after any mod-
el, and completely controlled its own pigmentation. It
could imitate anything.
"I don't mind your keeping the little nuisance around
in the Moon-laboratory, but I told you not to bring any
pets in this ship" Captain Future bawled out the an-
droid.
"Well, Grag brought along his pet, Eek, and so I
thought I had a right to bring Oog," Otho answered de-
fensively.
URT uttered an exasperated snort. "So we've got
Eek along, too? Where is he, Grag?"CRelunctantly the great robot opened a cabinet and
released another small animal, but one of a different
species. It was a little gray, bearlike creature with
beady black eyes and powerful jaws, now contentedly
gnawing upon a. small scrap of copper.
Eek, as Grag called this pet of his, was a moon-pup.
He was a member of the strange species of moon-dogs
that inhabited the airless satellite of Earth. These crea-
tures did not breathe air or eat ordinary food, but nour-
ished their strange tissues by devouring metal or metal-
6
The Futuremen were drawn inexorably into
the center of Halley's comet. (Chap. III)
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
lic ores. They were strongly telepathic, that being one
of their chief senses.
"Look at the beast ­ he's chewed up half the copper
instruments in that cabinet," Curt said bitterly. "Why
the devil did you bring him along?"
Grag shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, Chief, I had to do it. Eek can sense what peo-
ple are thinking, you know, and he knew we were going
and was upset about being left behind. He's a sensitive
little fellow."
"Sensitive? That walking four-legged nuisance? All
he knows is to eat up valuable metal and to sleep," Curt
said witheringly.
Simon Wright had paid no attention to the alterca-
tion over the pets. The Brain was too accustomed to
such arguments to notice them. "Curtis, I want you to
look at these figures," he said.
Curt went over to the side of the Brain, who was
poised uncannily upon his pale tractor-beams above the
mass of calculations. The brain had been marking small
crosses upon a space-chart that showed the quadrant be-
tween the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, ahead of them.
"Each cross represents where one of the spaceships
vanished, as nearly as I can figure it," the Brain ex-
plained. Captain Future felt dismayed as he looked. The
pattern of crosses was not focused around any one
point. It extended in a long, strung-out oval, reaching
almost from Uranus' orbit to that of Jupiter.
"I can't understand this," Curt muttered puzzledly. "I
thought the ships would all have disappeared in the
same part of space, and that by going there we could
find the key to the mystery. But since that isn't so, it
means we'll have to search the whole vast quadrant for
a clue."
"I fear so, lad," admitted the Brain. "And a search of
such dimensions will take us weeks."
Curt went discouragedly back to the pilot chair.
Gloomily he stared into the enormous, star-specked
void ahead of the flying ship. It yawned empty to the
eye, except for the bright spark of Jupiter to the right,
and the flaring glory of Halley's Comet far out on the
left ahead.
Curt's eyes suddenly narrowed upon the comet. His
unseeing stare had brought a subconscious idea into his
mind. A possibility hitherto ignored abruptly burst
upon him with stunning implications. He hastened back
into the cabin.
"Simon, let me see that chart of yours again!"
The Brain watched wonderingly as Curt closely ex-
amined the plotted crosses, each of which marked the
disappearance of a ship.
"Look, Simon! The first slops that vanished did so
near the orbit of Uranus. The next ones disappeared
further Sunward. The location of disappearances has
steadily moved in a Sunward direction."
"That's true," the Brain admitted. "Does it mean any-
thing?"
"I don't know," Curt muttered. "But Halley's Comet
has also been steadily moving in a Sunward direction,
during these vanishings."
His eyes flashed.
"Simon, I know it sounds insane, but I think that
Halley's Comet has something to do with this mystery!"
CHAPTER III
On the Comet World
USHING headlong through the great deeps of
space, Valley's comet flamed in the blackness like
a world afire. The gigantic spherical coma, over two
hundred thousand miles in diameter, flared in a super-
nal glory of dazzling electrical radiance.
R
Within that radiant shell of force, there pulsed the
deeper glow of the mysterious nucleus. And back from
the head streamed the millions of miles of the glowing
growing tail.
Strangest of all the Solar System's children was this
vast wanderer. Its long, elliptical orbit carried it out be-
yond the orbits of even the outer planets, out beyond
the frontier of the System to the shores of infinity.
There, as though obeying the call of its parent orb,
the great comet always turned and rushed Sunward
through the planetary orbits, gathering speed until it
was racing in through the circling worlds at frightful
velocity.
Curt Newton and his Futuremen gazed with a tinge
of awe at the gigantic, glowing body as their ship ap-
proached it. They were now but a million miles from
the coma.
"It's like slapping a Venusian marsh tiger in the teeth
to fool around with this thing," muttered Otho. "That
coma is pure electric energy. If we get too close to it,
we'll be blasted like a butterfly."
Otho spoke more truly than he knew.
A giant, invisible hand seemed suddenly to seize
their ship in an iron grasp. The racing craft, brought
suddenly to a halt in space, stopped so sharply that only
the cushioning anti-acceleration force-stasis to the con-
trol room saved them all from being crushed on the
walls.
As it was, Curt's brain blurred from the shock. He
heard a loud yell of alarm from Grag. He shook his
head violently to clear it.
Their ship, the Comet, was falling at nightmare
speed toward the giant flaring comet that was its name-
sake!
"What happened" Otho was yelling. "Chief, did the
cycs fail?"
"No, they're still going. We must have run into pow-
erful ether current that's sucking us toward the comet,"
Curt said hastily.
7
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
As he spoke, he was jamming down the cyc-pedal
and swerving the space-stick to bring the slip back on
its course. The massive cyclotrons roared with full
power, rocket tubes spouting tremendous blasts of
flame backward.
But the ship continued to fall toward the flaring
comet. All Curt's efforts could not bring it out of that
racing descent. And now he noticed with increased
alarm that the instruments before him had gone crazy.
Meteorometers, gravitometers and all the other instru-
ments had either blown out or were showing erratic,
impossible readings.
"This isn't any ether current that's grabbed us!" Curt
exclaimed. "This is a powerful magnetic beam of some
kind, that's somehow projected from the comet and is
sucking us in to it!"
A super-powerful magnetic force had seized the
ship's steelite hull and was dragging it at rapidly mount-
ing speed toward Halley's comet.
"Chief, something's the matter with me!" bellowed
Grag in evident panic. "I'm stuck against the wall here ­
I can't move!"
Curt discovered the predicament of the robot. Grag
was flattened against the wall of the control room near-
est the comet. The great robot, with all his mighty
strength, seemed unable to free himself. And Simon
Wright, the Brain, was also pinned to the wall.
"It's got me too, lad," rasped the Brain, with unper-
turbed calm, "This is an effect of the magnetic force
that's seized us."
APTAIN FUTURE understood. Both the great
body of Grag and the case of the Brain were com-
posed of metal alloys whose base was steelite. Thus
they were pinned against the wall by the magnetic
force.
C
The scene was one of desperate confusion. The
speed with which the unseen magnetic beam was draw-
ing them toward the ominous glowing coma was in-
creasing by the second. Grag and Simon were helpless.
Eek was cowering in a corner as he telepathically
sensed his master's alarm. The little meteor-mimic,
Oog, had promptly turned himself into an exact imita-
tion of Eek, in his fright.
"'Take it easy, men!" Curt ordered sternly. "We'll
have to try the vibration drive. Go back and start the
generators, Otho. Simon, you and Grag can't help ­ just
wait."
Curt's presence of mind brought order out of the mo-
mentary chaos. Otho raced back into the cabin to start
up the powerful generators, which were the source of
power for the Comet's auxiliary vibration drive. This
drive, whose mechanism could fling the ship at incredi-
ble speeds through the reactive push of etheric vibra-
tions, was intended only to be used in the vast spaces
outside the System. But Curt knew it was their only
hope of breaking free of the remorseless magnetic grip
that was dragging them to doom.
Captain Future discovered that he himself was being
dragged by a persistent force toward the wall against
which Grag and Simon were pinned. He found that the
effect was due to the proton pistol at his belt whose
steelite was tugged toward the wall by a powerful pull.
Curt hastily took the weapon out of his belt and at once
it flew toward the wall.
"Hey, look out!" Grag exclaimed. "That thing hit me
right in the stomach!"
"You can hammer out the dent in your stomach lat-
er," Curt retorted. "Otho, have you gone asleep back
there?" He was answered by the thrumming roar of the
vibration-drive generators, which soon were shaking
the ship with their powerful drone.
"All ready, Chief!" Otho reported, tumbling back
into the control room. He, too, had been forced to jetti-
son his weapons.
"This will yank us out of the magnetic grip, if any-
thing will" Curt gritted. "Hold on, Otho!"
He flung in the switches of the vibration drive. The
slip, still falling dizzily toward the comet, shuddered vi-
olently as the powerful propulsion vibrations were pro-
jected suddenly from its stern.
But it still continued to fall toward Halley's Comet,
still gripped by the relentless magnetic beam. Curt in-
creased the power. The ship shuddered even more
strongly, and an ominous creaking warned of tremen-
dous stresses that were weakening its frame. Yet it still
could not break free.
"We're caught for good!" Curt exclaimed dismayed-
ly. "Even the vibration drive can't tear us loose. Fiends
of Pluto, there must be a world of power in this beam
that's seized us!
"What are we going to do?" cried Otho. "We don't
have much time left. Holy sun-imps, look at that
coma!"
The spectacle outside the windows was now an ap-
palling one, as the ship hurtled toward the comet at in-
credible speed. The immense spherical coma of Hal-
ley's comet filled almost all space ahead of them, a
blinding sea of dazzling white light. It was not really
light, at all, Curt well knew.
HAT coma was a vast shell of ions, electrically
charged atoms whose tremendous potential was
such as to destroy by an unearthly lightning blast any
matter that touched it.
T
And their ship would strike that coma in a dreadful-
ly short time. Captain Future felt, as he had never felt
before, a sense of being trapped by forces that even the
resourcefulness and scientific powers of the Futuremen
could not contend against.
Yet it was characteristic of Curt Newton that even in
this moment of frightful danger, he was not thinking of
8
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
himself. It was of Joan Randall and Ezra Gurney that he
was thinking, and of the others who had been lost in
vanished ships.
"They were all drawn into the comet by a magnetic
beam, the same as we," he declared. "Simon, that beam
was deliberately projected to seize us!"
"Aye, lad," came the answer of the helpless Brain.
"There's intelligence and menace inside Halley's
comet."
We've got about five minutes before we hit the
coma!" Otho yelled. "This is the end of our space-trail.
Good-bye, Grag, old pal ­ I'm sorry now I was always
ribbing you about being a robot. You may be made of
metal, but you're a better man than I ever was."
"No, Otho," Grag boomed earnestly. "You were a
swell guy but I didn't appreciate you. I guess I was just
jealous."
Curt Newton, looking fearlessly ahead into that ap-
palling sea of light, toward which they were being
dragged, suddenly shouted.
"Before you two grave-diggers make your last
farewells, look at this!" he cried. "I think we're going to
get through the coma!"
They stared unbelievingly. ''Their ship was now
rushing straight toward the vast, flaring wall of electric
force, the head of the comet. 'There was a round aper-
ture in the gloving shell of the coma. And the ship was
being sucked straight toward that hole!
"I get it now!" captain Future exclaimed. "The mag-
netic beam that holds us is projected out through the
coma to make that aperture. We'll be dragged through
that hole, perhaps without touching the coma!"
The moment was at hand as he spoke. The Comet
seemed rushing headlong toward destruction in the flar-
ing sea of electric force. One touch would destroy them
as lightning might shatter a toy.
Straight as an arrow, the Futuremen hurtled toward
that aperture in the coma: They entered it and Curt and
Otho cried out and shielded their eyes. The blaze of
force all around the ship was blinding in intensity.
When he uncovered his eyes, hurt perceived with a
thrill of hope that they were through the coma! Their
ship was inside the spherical shell of the comet's head,
was being dragged at unabated speed toward a little
planet that hung at the center of this vast enclosed
space.
A world here at the heart of Halley's Comet! A little
world that was the solid nucleus of this vast, mysterious
wanderer of the void!
"We're through ­ we're in the comet!" Otho yelled
hopefully. Then, remembering something he added
hastily to Crag: "I hope you don't think I meant it when
I said you were a better man than I. I was just handing
you another rib, you poor metal imitation of a man!"
"The same goes for me!" Grag bellowed angrily at
the android. "I was just hoping to make death easier for
you, when I told you what a swell guy you were ­ you
offspring of a smelly retortful of chemicals!"
URT ignored the verbal combatants.
Simon the magnetic beam comes from that little
world! That means Joan and Ezra must have beer:
dragged here in the same way!" lie said excitedly. "If
they're on that world ­"
C
"We'll never know if they are!" Otho groaned sud-
denly. "We're going to be smashed to Hinders when we
hit that planet at this speed!"
Curt, too, had realized their peril. It seemed they had
miraculously escaped the coma, only to meet an equally
frightful end. Their velocity was suicidal as they
plunged toward the mysterious planet.
The planet that poised here at the heart of the great
comet was a small green world, blanketed by thick
forests. It was drenched in the brilliant, unearthly glare
of the glowing coma that completely surrounded it.
At one point upon this small green world, there was
a star-shaped white city. And they were being dragged
straight down toward that city, whose alabaster domes
and towers and streets rushed up toward them with
fearful speed.
Captain Future, nerving himself for the inevitable
crash that meant annihilation, felt a sudden deceleration
of their flashing fall. So sharp and swift was that slow-
down that even through the cushioning stasis of force
which protected them, they felt again a blurring of their
senses.
"They don't want us to crash!" choked Curt. "Who-
ever's operating that magnetic beam wants us to land in
one piece ­"
"Chief, look at that!" Otho yelled, pointing unsteadi-
ly down.
In the fiercely flaring light of the coma, the strange
white comet-city lay close beneath their falling ship.
Curt glimpsed a round court of spaceport size near
the center of the ivory metropolis.
It was toward that court that the ship was failing.
The court was several thousand feet in diameter, ringed
by white towers crowned with massive copper elec-
trodes. At the center of the round court was a circular,
silvery disk five hundred feet across. Around the disk
rested scores of spaceships of familiar appearance.
"That disk is the magnet that's pulling us down!"
Curt deduced. "I see people down there."
"Here comes the crash!" drag shouted.
It was not really a crash, their impact against the sil-
very magnet-disk. It was a jarring contest that shook
them violently. But so greatly had their speed been de-
celerated in the last moments that the ship was not shat-
tered.
An instant after they came to rest, Curt and Otho
were picking themselves up. Grag and the gain were
pinned helplessly now on the floor.
9
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"Help me get loose, chief!" the robot bellowed.
"That cursed magnetic force is holding me ­"
He was suddenly interrupted by a sound of hammer-
ing and prying outside the Caret's airlock door.
"They're forcing into the ship, whoever they are!"
Otho cried His slant green eyes flared. "We've got a
fight on our hands. These cursed comet pirates can't
kidnap yes like this!"
Curt and Otho jumped to pick up their proton pis-
tols. But the weapons were pinned against the floor by
the powerful magnetism beneath.
The airlock of the ship burst open with a crash and a
half dozen men charged into the cabin.
"Holy sun-imps!" screeched Otho. "They're devils of
the comet!"
VEN Captain Future was for a moment petrified
by stupefaction. These comet men who had entered
did indeed seem utterly unearthly.
E
They were tall, fair-haired fellows who wore sleeve-
less shirts and shorts of silvery cloth. They also wore
long swords at their belts, and two of them carried gun-
like weapons with electrodes instead of barrels.
But these men glowed with dazzling light! From ev-
ery inch of their bodies, from their hair, their faces,
their arms and legs streamed a halo of brilliance that
was like the corona of the awful coma itself.
"They're men, even though they do shine with
light!" Curt cried. "Clear them out of the ship! If we
can wreck that magnet ­"
He was plunging forward as he spoke, his fists fly-
ing toward the weird, shining invaders. Then as his fist
hit one of the glowing comet men, Curt Newton felt a
paralyzing electric shock along his arm.
His body stiffened in agony. He realized it was not
merely light that glowed from these shining men, but
electric force. These were electrically charged human
beings! The body of each was invested with an electric
potential that should have been enough to kill them.
"Get back ­ don't touch them!" Curt yelled a warn-
ing to Otho
As he shouted, one of the shining electric men ex-
tended a hand and touched Curt's head. The full electric
shock stabbed to Captain Future's brain, and he was
plunged into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER IV
The Cometae
URT NEWTON'S returning consciousness made
him aware, first of all, of a strange, tingling sensa-
tion through his whole body. He felt as though he were
lying beneath a super-powerful generator that was
flooding every fiber of his being with electric force.
C
"He is coming around now, Grag," a familiar, metal-
lic voice was rasping. "So stop your worrying."
Curt forced his eyes open. Grag and Otho and the
Brain were hovering anxiously over him. The pets, Oog
and Eek cowered close by.
He lay on the floor of a small, cell-like room of
white synthestone. There was a single heavy metal
door, and a high, tiny window through which flooded a
brilliant white light.
"Simon, what happened in the ship after I passed
out?" Curt cried.
"I know what happened to me!" Otho burst out furi-
ously. "One of those cursed shining men grabbed me
the same as you, and I felt a shock that knocked me sil-
ly. I woke up here just a few minutes ago."
"And we couldn't help you," Grag boomed angrily.
"Simon and I were pinned against the ship's floor by
that devilish magnetism from beneath."
"That is the truth, lad," the Brain told Curt. "After
stunning you and Otho, the shining men secured Grag
and me with chains. Then they turned o$ the magnetism
outside, and dragged all four of us, even the two pets,
to this prison."
"Did you see anything of Joan Randall as we were
brought here?" Captain Future demanded anxiously.
"No, lad," murmured the Brain. "She may be impris-
oned like us somewhere in this cursed city."
Curt strode with nervous quickness! to the window.
He drew himself up to it and stared out at the amazing
city.
Graceful alabaster buildings of white synthestone,
crowned by bubblelike domes and slender towers, rose
in his field of vision. He teas looking across the great
central plaza of the magnet-disk. He could make out his
own ship and other captured ships parked out there. On
the other side of the plaza bulked a large white palace
with one huge, looming dome.
Curt saw that in the white streets and green gardens
moved many of the natives of thus comet world, afoot
and in six-wheeled power vehicles. They were all
fairhaired folk, beautiful women, stalwart men. And all
of them glowed with that dazzling, uncanny radiance of
electric force. They seemed like angels of light inhabit-
ing some strange celestial metropolis.
Down upon the alabaster city poured a flood of
white brilliance from the sky. For the sky of this comet
world was the flaring aura of the comet's nucleus, Com-
pletely enclosing this hidden world, thus nebulous
coma arched across the heavens like a firmament of
scintillating white fire.
"Who'd have dreamed that all this existed inside
Halley's comet?" muttered Otho, peering out with awe
from over Curt's shoulder.
Curt's gray eyes narrowed.
"These comet folk are enemies of our System. They
must be, or they wouldn't have devised that great elec-
tromagnet which sucks distant ships in here by means
10
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
of its beam."
"But what are these people?" Grag demanded puz-
zledly. "They shine just as though they were highly
charged with electricity."
"By all the imps of Uranus!" Otho swore. "If you'd
have touched one of them, you'd know that they really
are electrically charged!"
Curt Newton nodded quickly.
"There's no doubt about it. All these people possess
physically an electric charge that should destroy them ­
but doesn't. Simon, what do you make of it?"
"It is strange," muttered the Brain. "Yet life is elec-
trical in nature. Even back in the twentieth century,
Crile showed that the living cells of a body are tiny bat-
teries which produce the electrical current we call life."
"Theoretically, all life may be electrical. But nobody
ever saw electric people like these before," objected
Otho. "And wily did they drag our ship in here? What
are they going to do with us?"
"More important what have they done with Joan and
Ezra?" Curt interrupted. His eyes flashed. "If they've
harmed her ­"
"I hear a tapping in the wall," Grag suddenly an-
nounced.
HEY listened. But they heard nothing for a mo-
ment. Then footsteps outside their cell door be-
came audible.
T
"That must be what you heard," muttered Otho.
"Our keepers coming."
A little panel in the bottom of the locked door was
suddenly opened, and something was pushed through.
Then the opening was closed.
Their captors had left them two things ­ a bowl of
synthetic-looking mush obviously intended as their ra-
tions, and a book. The book was a queer one. Its leaves
were of thin, silvery metal. Upon them were pictures of
objects and actions, and under each picture an unfamil-
iar word.
"Why, it's an elementary textbook of their
language," Curt said puzzledly. "Maybe they're not re-
ally hostile to us at all."
"Maybe that shock they gave me was all in fun,"
Otho retorted bitterly.
"I hear that tapping in the wall again," Crag inter-
rupted.
"That tapping is inside your skull, bucket-head,"
Otho told the robot impatiently. "Four mechanical brain
has stripped a gear, probably."
Crag, always sensitive to mention of his mechanical
nature, flared up.
"Why, you miserable little mess of chemicals ­"
"Shut up!" Captain Future ordered them sharply. "I
hear that tapping, too. It's an interplanetary code. Lis-
ten!"
The sound came faint from one wall of their cell.
"SQ?" it spelled out in the System's universal code.
"SQ ­ who's there?" Curt translated. His eyes lit.
"There are other prisoners in here with us. Maybe it's
Joan!"
Hastily he rapped in answer, stating his identity and
finishing with the same inquiring signal.
The answer came quickly.
"Are you new prisoners really the famous Future-
men? I am Tiko Thrin, a scientist of the Syrtis Labora-
tories of Mars. I'm sorry that you are also captives of
the Cometae.
"The Cometae? Is that what you call these comet
folk?" asked Curt.
"It is what they call themselves," tapped Tiko Thrin.
"I have learned their language and many facts about
them, for I have been here ever since the space-liner on
which I was traveling was dragged into the comet."
"Have you any knowledge of other prisoners here?"
Curt rapped anxiously. "Especially Marshal Ezra
Gurney and a girl, Joan Randall."
"Both of them are here in this city of Mloon," came
the quick reply. "I heard them brought in, many days
ago. Ezra Gurney is still a prisoner in this place. I have
talked with him many times in code. Prisoners in the
other cells relay our signals from cell to cell."
"Ask him if he and Joan are all right," Curt directed
quickly.
Ire waited with fast-beating heart for the answer,
feeling a new hope. But when Tiko Thrin's report came,
it brought dismaying information.
"Ezra is overjoyed that you Futuremen are here. He
says he is all right but is worried about the girl. She is
not here in prison, he says, but is somewhere in the
city."
"Ask him what happened to her," Captain Future
bade the Martian anxiously.
Again minutes dragged by before the relayed answer
came.
"He says that he and Joan were taken before the
rulers of the Cometae, King Thoryx and Queen Lulain.
They were asked to join the Cometae. Ezra refused and
was brought back here. But the girl was not brought
back."
URT'S anxiety increased. Tiko Thrin tapped on.
All prisoners brought here are first given a chance
to learn the language and then are asked to join the
Cometae. Those who refuse are brought back here, as I
was. We are kept locked up until the solitary confine-
ment makes us change our minds. Many prisoners have
weakened and surrendered. Perhaps the girl was among
them."
C
"If they're hostile to the System, Joan wouldn't join
them under any circumstances!" Curt tapped back. "She
may be trying to deceive them. Tell me, what are these
Cometae planning that they need recruits?"
11
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"I do not know," came Tiko Thrin's answer. "It is
obvious that the Cometae are preparing some important
venture, but I have no idea what it is. They are only
obeying the orders of the Allus in what they do."
"The Allus? Who are they?"
"That, too, I don't know," the Martian replied. "I
only know that the Allus are the real masters of this
strange comet-world, and that these Cometae regard
them with a respect and awe verging on dread."
"Are the Allus men? What do they look like?" Curt
demanded.
"None of us prisoners has ever seen any Allus,"
Tiko Thrin tapped back. "The Allus never come to this
city of the Cometae, but inhabit some mysterious place
in the north. The Cometae speak always of the Allus as
`the dark masters' or as `they from beyond the veil.' ''
"Devil take all these mysteries!" Otho exclaimed vi-
olently. "What I want to know is ­ how are we going to
get out of here?"
When Curt tapped that question, Tiko Thrin's reply
was flatly discouraging.
"I fear that even you Futuremen cannot escape this
place. You will be confined until you learn the lan-
guage of the Cometae. Then you will be taken to the
rulers."
The Martian added a warning.
"Do not attempt any rash attack upon the Cometae.
They have very powerful weapons, as well as the pro-
tective charge of electricity which keeps their bodies
immortal."'
Immortal Curt repeated. "You mean that these elec-
tric folk are deathless?"
"Yes. The Cometae cannot die unless they should
leave this comet. Then they would perish for lack of the
12
Captain Future and the Brain bent over the electron microscope. (Chap. VII)
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
electric radiation that is their food."
"These Cometae live on electricity?" Curt tapped in-
credulously.
"'They do," replied the Martian. "As you no doubt
know, life itself is essentially electrical. We get our vi-
tal electricity from the chemical batteries of our body
cells. When the cells wear out and can no longer pro-
duce the vital electric current, we age and die.
"But the cells of the Cometae have somehow been
so altered that they do not produce this all-important
energy but simply receive it from the coma's electric ra-
diation ­ the same radiation you doubtless feel tingling
through your bodies now.
"Thus the Cometae do not need to eat or drink, for
their cells absorb their vital energy from the coma's
electric radiance. Because of that, they cannot age and
cannot die ­ unless killed by accident."
"This is very interesting," the Brain declared ab-
sorbedly. He had Curt tap a further question to the Mar-
tian. "Were the Cometae always like this, or were they
once ordinary human people?"
"I am sure, according to what is passed along the
prison `grapevine,' that until a few years ago they were
ordinary humans," replied the Martian scientist. "It is
said that only a few years ago, the Allus changed them
from normal people into undying electric men."
"Whoever these mysterious Allus are, they must
wield incredible scientific power if they can accom-
plish a feat like that!" said Otho startledly.
HE exchange of messages was interrupted by a
deep vibration of sound that traveled through the
window. It sounded like the note of a great bell.
T
"It means that `night' has come," tapped Tiko Thrin
in answer to Curt's question. "There is no real night
upon this world, of course, but the Cometae have a pe-
riod of sleep which they all observe."
The activity in the city outside lessened. Soon but
few of the shining electric folk were to be seen in the
streets.
Next "morning" the small panel in the door of the
Futuremen's cell was again opened and another ration
of synthetic food thrust in to them. One of the Cometae
guards spoke to them through the door, asking what
seemed to be a question in his unfamiliar language. Re-
ceiving no answer, the guard went on.
For three "days" the guard followed the same proce-
dure. Curt spent nearly all of the time in intensive study
of the Cometae language. He assumed from Tiko
Thrin's information that when they could speak the lan-
guage, they would be taken before the rulers of these
strange comet folk.
Curt Newton now realized that this was their sole
chance of getting out of their prison. The door was nev-
er unlocked. The Futuremen had been stripped of every
tool and weapon. Simple as their prison was, it seemed
inescapable.
Otho and Grag and the Brain also picked up a work-
ing knowledge of Cometae language from the textbook,
though Simon Wright spent much of his rime dis-
cussing with his fellow-scientist in the next cell the
mysteries of this comet world. Crag and Otho, chafing
at confinement quarreled endlessly, while Oog slept
peacefully and Eek gnawed contentedly on a metal
bowl.
On the third "morning," when their guard asked his
usual question, Captain Future was able to understand
it.
"Are you able to speak our language?" the guard
was saying.
"Yes, I am," Curt replied haltingly.
The guard exclaimed in surprise.
"You learned very swiftly! I will call Zarn, the
prison captain."
Presently the deep voice of that official came
through the door.
"So you can speak our tongue already?"
"Yes, and we demand that your people give us an
explanation for this enforced captivity," Captain Future
retorted.
"You will receive your answer from King Thoryx,"
replied Zarn. "But I cannot take you to him, for I have
not the authority. I will notify Khinkir, captain of the
king's guard."
Later that day the door of the Futuremen's cell was
unexpectedly opened. Two officers of the Cometae and
a half-dozen soldiers stood outside.
All of the shining electric men of this guard wore
swords at their belts. And three of them carried alertly
the gunlike weapons that had copper electrodes instead
of barrels. Zarn, the prison captain, was a massive,
stocky, rough-looking individual. Khinkir, captain of
the king's guard, looked younger and his silver-cloth
garments were more ornate.
"Let me advise you," Khinkir immediately warned
Captain Future, "that these weapons project a concen-
trated electric blast that can destroy you in a split sec-
ond, should you attempt any rash act. Now come with
me."
The other three Futuremen moved forward with Curt
Newton, but Khinkir hastily warned them back.
"Not you! Only this man is to come."
"Why can't my comrades come with me?" Curt de-
manded.
"They are not human," replied Khinkir, glancing
somewhat nervously at the strange trio of robot and an-
droid and Brain. "We do not know what powers they
may possess, and the king ordered them to be kept
here."
THO showed the rage he felt at this contretemps.
Otho had secretly been nursing a hare-brainedO
13
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
plan of attacking the Cometae ruler and holding him as
a hostage, though the android had been careful not to
tell Curt. Now the plan vas ruined, and Otho boiled
with anger.
"You do well to dread our powers!" he told the cap-
tain of the guards menacingly. "If you keep us impris-
oned here, you will feel the weight of those powers!
Why, my metal comrade here could tear down this
place if he so desired!"
Grag, somewhat amazed at this assertion, neverthe-
less backed it up with an imposing show of ferocity. He
beat clangingly on his metal breast.
"That's rights" he growled in his deep, booming
voice. "I could tear this place up like it was made of pa-
per."
"And the Brain yonder," Otho went on with his
threats, "has scientific powers beyond your dreams ­
powers greater even than those of the Allus."
"Shut up, you idiot!" hissed Curt to Otho. "Let me
handle thus,"
Zarn, the prison captain, had shrunk back a little
from the Futuremen and so had the Cometae soldiers.
But Khinkir now answered angrily.
"No individual has powers comparable to those of
the mighty ones from beyond the veil! You utter a blas-
phemy against the Allus!"
He turned to the prison captain.
"Set guards outside this door from now on, Zarn.
These creatures are dangerous!"
Curt Newton inwardly cursed the android's foolish
threats as he was conducted down the corridor. The
passage ended in a guard room full of Cometae sol-
diery. Curt was led out of it into the open air. He
blinked, half-blinded by the coma's brilliant sky. Its
electric force tingled through him strongly. Khinkir and
the guards kept their weapons trained upon him alertly
as they conducted him around the plaza to the looming
white palace.
The high-arched white halls of the palace were mag-
nificent, their alabaster walls decorated by frescoes of
silver. They passed into a large, circular throne room
whose ceiling was the curving white dome far over-
head. Facing Captain Future was a sunburst throne, a
wide benchlike chair of solid silver backed by a golden
disk.
Upon it sat a man and a woman of the Cometae, two
richly dressed, radiant figures who were listening now
to an older man.
"So that's King Thoryx and Queen Lulain," Curt
thought, as he was led toward the rulers. He glanced
swiftly around. "I don't see any of the mysterious Al-
lus."
Around the big throne room were knots of the
Cometae nobility, handsome men and beautiful women,
whose glowing electrical radiance of body deepened
their strangely angelic look. But their faces were not
those of angels! Curt read in many of those faces a
shadowy oppression, a dim, haunting dread.
Then Captain Future stiffened as he noticed one of
the Cometae women. In her scanty silver-cloth garment,
she was a figure of shining, unearthly beauty, her slim
white body brilliant with glowing electric energy. But
she was not fair-haired, as all the other Cometae. Her
hair was dark.
Curt Newton felt a staggering shock. He could not
believe the terrible thing his eyes told him.
"It's impossible!" he muttered hoarsely.
Then as he came closer to the girl, he saw that it was
true. This girl of the Cometae, this weirdly shining
electric figure, was none other than Joan Randall!
CHAPTER V
Shadow of the Allus
N the prison cell, after Captain Future had been tak-
en away and the door had been relocked, the Brain
faced Otho condemningly.
I
Simon Wright never gave way to anger. The cold,
intellectual mind of the Brain abhorred useless emo-
tion. But for that very reason, his rebuke was the more
stinging.
"You have committed a rash piece of folly," he told
Otho severely. "Your empty boasts have convinced the
Cometae captains that we are dangerous. Now we shall
be guarded even more closely."
"I lost my temper," Otho admitted sulkily. "Anyway,
what difference does it make? We couldn't get out, any-
way."
Presently they heard footsteps reapproaching their
cell. But to the amazement of all three Futuremen, the
door of the cell was unlocked. Zarn, the prison captain,
stepped inside.
Zarn held one of the electrode-barreled weapons
ready for use. But the Cometae captain stood eying his
charges for a moment in silence. His stocky, shining
figure had an attitude of indecision, and there was an
expression of mingled doubt and hope upon his massive
face. Finally he spoke to the Brain.
"Is it true, what your comrade said, that you are
master of a science greater than that of the Allus?"
Simon answered cautiously.
"My, comrades and I possess certain scientific pow-
ers, yes. I do not know whether they are greater than
those of the Allus, for I do not know anything about the
Allus or their methods."
Zarn came a little closer and thrust out his hand.
That hand, glowing, as all his body with electric ener-
gy, was trembling a little.
"You see that I am now an electric creature, as are
all my people," Zarn said hoarsely. "It was the science
of the AIlus that made me like this. Could you undo
14
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
what they have done?"
"You mean, could I change you back into a normal,
non-electric man?" the Brain asked surprisedly.
Zarn nodded anxiously, his eyes clinging to the
weird face of the Brain.
"Could you?" he repeated.
Simon sensed that much might depend upon his an-
swer. He could not yet fathom all that as in the
Cometae captain's mind, but it was evident that his re-
ply was of supreme importance to Zarn.
The Brain thought rapidly before he spoke.
"It should be possible," he said carefully, "to bring
you back to normal by reversing whatever deep alter-
ation has been made in your bodily cells. Our red-
haired leader and I would need to study your body first,
before we could say definitely."
A wild, haggard hope showed in Zarn's eyes. The
electric man trembled with visible emotion. His free fist
clenched.
"If you could do that!" he whispered hoarsely. "If
you could free my people and me from this horrible
death-in-life and make us real men and women again!"
"You mean that you Cometae don't like being elec-
tric men?" Otho demanded incredulously.
"Like it?" repeated Zarn. He laughed bitterly.
"Stranger, would you willingly suffer such a joyless
mockery of existence? Once we were real men and
women. Once we grew up through happy childhood to
maturity, loved and had children of our own, grew
peacefully old and passed to the quiet rest of death.
"But now!" His voice was thick with passion. "For
us there is no escape, unless we so sicken of this life
that we put violent end to ourselves!"
The somber picture Zarn painted communicated it-
self to his listeners.
"I remember now that I noticed no children at all in
this city," the Brain recalled. "I should have known that
this electrification of your bodies would make your
whole race sterile."
THO asked Zarn a blunt question. "If your people
don't like this electric existence, why did you let
yourselves be changed so?"
O
"My people had no voice in the matter!" Zarn an-
swered violently. "It was done to us without our con-
sent. The only ones who wanted this change were the
tyrants who rule us ­ Thoryx and Lulain, and that dev-
il's wizard, old Querdel. It was they who plotted this
thing with the Allus."
"Who are the Allus, really?" the Brain asked him.
Dread crept like a chilling shadow into Zarn's eyes.
"None of us Cometae except our rulers know much
of the Allus. But we do know that they are in no way
human, having unguessably alien forms and powers.
And we know that they do not belong to this cosmos at
all, but came from outside it,"
"From outside our cosmos?" gasped Otho.
"I tell only what I have heard," Zarn answered. "I
have never seen the Allus myself ­ though it was in
their black citadel in the north, that I and all the rest of
my people were changed into this terrible electric
state."
"You're talking in riddles!" Otho exclaimed. "If you
were in the Allus' citadel, if it was they who changed
you, you must have seen them!"
"No, none of our people saw them or knew how it
teas that they changed us," Zarn repeated. "I know it
sounds incredible, but it is so."
"Let him tell it in his own way, Otho," ordered the
Brain.
Zarn continued earnestly.
"We Cometae have lived long upon this comet
world, which our pioneering ancestors reached long ago
by coming in their ships through a chance rift in the co-
ma. We were then a quite ordinary human race, and
lived here as such for many ages.
"Our government slipped into the hands of a small
class of nobles which centered around the hereditary
king. Yet in spite of the exploitation by this ruling
class, our life was bearable.
"Then, as though in a bad dream, the shadow of the
Allus fell upon us. It came about through Querdel, an
elderly noble who is one of King Thoryx's councillors.
Querdel is somewhat of a scientist, though our science
may be crude and primitive compared to yours.
"Somehow, in his devilish researches, old Querdel
first got into communication with beings inhabiting a
weird, alien universe that lies in the extra-dimensional
gulf outside out ordinary cosmos.
"These beings called themselves the Allus. They
had, it seems, been trying for a long time to communi-
cate with someone in our universe. For the Allus de-
sired to enter our cosmos. They wanted to open a door
into our world from the black extra-cosmic abysses in
which they dwelt. And the door could not be opened
from their side alone, but must be unlocked from both
sides. Hence their need for someone to cooperate with
them on this side."
Anger blazed in Zarn's eyes.
"They found the one they needed in old Querdel," he
said. "They made alluring promises to that old devil
and to Thoryx and Lulain. They told them, We Allus
have powers of which you do not dream, and will richly
reward you ­ if you will help us open a way into your
cosmos. We will reward you by making you and all
your people ageless and undying. You will be like gods.
"Thoryx and Lulain, and Querdel and our other
rulers, seized the bribe the Allus offered. They coveted
that promised immortality. And so, obeying the explicit
mental commands of the Allus that came through the
veil, they prepared to help open the door through which
the dark masters could invade our universe.
15
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"They had us people of the Cometae build a great,
ring-shaped citadel at the northern pole of our world.
They had us build also certain strange mechanisms and
apparatus, the purpose of which was totally unknown to
any one of us. Only the Allus, who transmitted their in-
structions by mental messages through the veil, under-
stood the nature of the instruments we constructed."
ARN'S eyes blazed in reminiscence.
"Then, eyes in that northern citadel, Thoryx and
old Querdel operated the strange machines at the bid-
ding of the dark masters. They unlocked the door into
the extra-dimensional abysses that lie outside our cos-
mos. And through that door, the Allus somehow came
into our universe, and made that citadel their home.
And they kept their promise of making Thoryx and old
Querdel immortal.
Z
"For when Thoryx and the old wizard returned to us
from the citadel, they had been made into shining elec-
tric men, such as you note see. They told us then that
the Allus had done that to them, that the Allus would
give us all this wonderful gift of electric immortality.
Every one of our people of the Cometae was to achieve
deathlessness.
"Some of my people, especially the nobles of the
ruling class, were won over by this prospect. But the
great majority of us were not. Even though it meant de-
ferring death and age indefinitely, we shrank from be-
coming inhuman electric men such as Thoryx and
Querdel. We did not wish to lose our humanity. And we
were afraid of these dark, mysterious Allus from the
unguessable outside, and suspicious of their purposes.
"But we ordinary folks had no choice! Thoryx and
the nobles were resolved upon making us deathless. For
the Allus had promised our rulers that then they would
reap great powers and eventually sway over many peo-
ples. They of the nobles went first, one group after an-
other, to the citadel of the Allus in the north ­ to return
to us as electric men and women.
"Then we of the soldiery and the people were or-
dered to go, group by group. We went north to that
mysterious citadel which we ourselves had built for the
dark masters. But before ever we entered it, a pall came
upon our minds. The Allus employed that mental dark-
ness so that none of us might learn their secrets. When
the cloud lifted from our minds, we were again outside
the citadel and had been made into electric men and
women, such as you now see!"
Otho uttered a low exclamation.
"They had you all in some kind of anesthesia as they
altered you!" he declared.
"It is more probable," the Brain said thoughtfully,
"that the Allus used an artificially induced amnesia on
their subjects. These so-called dark masters must be
great wielders of mental force, indeed."
Zarn shook his massive head.
"I do not know how it was done. Perhaps Thoryx
and Querdel know. They are the only Cometae who are
permitted to go freely to and from the citadel of the Al-
lus."
Zarn concluded his story somberly.
"But we know now that the Allus are alien and evil,
that they are planning something dark and wicked," he
summarized. "It was they who directed Thoryx and
Querdel and our other rulers to construct the great elec-
tromagnet that sucks spaceships into the comet. That
electromagnet is operated by some of Querdel's men,
through a special detector apparatus that can spat any
ship within millions of miles."
"Why do the Allus want ships and men from the out-
side brought in here as captives?" the Brain asked keen-
ly.
The Cometae prison captain shook his head.
"I don't know. None of us knows just what their un-
fathomable purposes are. But we are certain some in-
volved and sinister scheme is afoot."
HE Futuremen glanced at each other. It was the
Brain who spoke the thought that was in all their
minds.
T
"This is no mere menace within this comet, but a
dark, threatening force from outside our cosmos that
we've run into," muttered Simon Wright. "I'd give a lot
to know what these Allus are like ­ and what they
plan."
The Brain thought hard.
"I feel certain, Zarn, that Curtis Newton and I can
devise a way of retransforming you people when we
have thoroughly studied the problem," he told the
Cometae captain. "But until then, I cannot promise. We
must have a chance to investigate your bodies with cer-
tain instruments."
"I will bring secretly everything you need, next
sleep-period," Zarn promised excitedly. "And I will
contact my friends, also."
The Brain quickly named a list of things he would
require from the Futuremen's confiscated spaceship.
Suddenly the prison captain started as. They heard a
sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor.
"Someone is coming!" Zarn exclaimed fearfully. "If
I am caught in here with you, our whole plan is ruined!"
CHAPTER VI
The Throne Room
ETRIFIED by a freezing horror, Curt Newton stood
amid his guards in the throne room of the Cometae,
staring with wild eyes at Joan Randall. He was stunned
to his very soul, unable for the moment to believe what
he saw. He had found the girl he loved, the girl whose
danger had brought him on this perilous quest into the
P
16
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
comet world. He had found her ­ and she was one of
the Cometae!
Joan had never looked so beautiful. Her soft, dark
hair and lovely face, her lithe, utterly feminine figure so
completely revealed by the scanty silvercloth garment
were brilliantly enhanced by the glow of inherent elec-
tric force, scintillating from every inch of her body and
investing her with its shining halo.
But to Captain Future, that dazzling aura of living
light was a horror beyond description. He forgot his
guards and stepped blindly and numbly forward, all the
agony of his love and despair showing in his bloodless
face.
"Joan!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "My God, what have
these devils done to you!"
"Curt, stay back!" the girl cried in sharp alarm.
It was too late. In the tumult of emotions that shook
him, Curt Newton had reached hungry arms toward her.
His hand barely grazed her shining shoulder ­ and he
recoiled, his whole arm paralyzed by electric shock.
"Don't try to touch me, Curt! You can't. "Joan Ran-
dall was telling him, her eyes full of apprehension.
The voice of Khinkir captain of the Cometae guards,
snarled from behind.
"King Thoryx awaits you, prisoner. Move on!"
Captain Future barely heard him.
"Joan, I'll kill these fiends for doing a thing like this
to you!" he raged. "I'll tear this devil's city of theirs to
fragments!"
"But Curt, I wanted to be changed like this!" Joan
exclaimed. "I wanted to become one of the Cometae."
He had thought he could receive no greater shock,
but her words left him mentally gasping, eying her in
incredulous disbelief.
"Curt, the Cometae are not fiends," Joan was contin-
uing earnestly. "They are a fine and friendly folk, who
are allied to a wonderful race of superhuman beings
called the Allus. The Allus gave these people immortal-
ity, and they freely offered me the same priceless boon.
"Think of it, Curt ­ I'm practically immortal! I'll
never grow old and ugly; I can live on and on and on! Is
it any wonder that I accepted this wonderful thing they
offered? And if you are allowed to join them, Curt, we
two could live here forever!"
Khinkir's snarl came sharply then to Curt's shocked
ears.
"Unless you move on, prisoner, you will be blasted
where you stand," said Khinkir sharply.
"Please go, Curt. The king is waiting," Joan said in
distress. "And try to conquer this hostility of yours to-
ward the Cometae. I want you to see their greatness,
and to join them as I have done."
She drew back into the group of Cometae nobles in
the background, and Curt lost sight of her. Khinkir and
his subordinate guards had raised their electrode-
weapons toward him, with grim purpose.
Curt Newton stumbled along with them, on across
the great, open throne room.
The scene before him, the brilliant throne room and
the shining figures of the Cometae nobles, was a
somber blur to his eyes. It was difficult for him to
breathe, as though iron bands had been clamped around
his chest.
Dimly he heard a voice through the confused throb-
bing of his thoughts. Then came the hissing, furious
whisper of Khinkir who was standing beside him.
"The king is speaking to you, prisoner"
URT'S vision cleared. He was standing with his
guards in front of the sunburst throne. He looked
up at the man and woman who sat on the benchlike sil-
ver chair.
C
Thoryx, hereditary king of the Cometae, was hand-
some as all his fair-haired race, his youthful figure in-
vested by that alien halo of electric force that gave
them all such an incongruously angelic appearance. But
Curt read weakness in the smooth and effeminate fea-
tures of the king, and in has suspiciously narrowed
eyes.
There was no weakness in the girl beside him, the
queen Lulain. Her blond beauty, flaming with the elec-
tric glow, was brazenly revealed by her brief, richly
jewelled silver garments. She sat with languorous, fe-
line grace, looking down with insolently appraising
eyes at Captain Future's tall, red-haired figure.
"You do not answer me, stranger!" Thoryx was say-
ing. The king glanced petulantly at Khinkir. "I thought
you said he had learned to speak our language."
Curt answered for himself, in the Cometae tongue.
"I have learned it," he said, a harsh edge in his
voice.
"Do not take that tone with me, stranger!" flared the
Cometae king." You are a prisoner here. If I but say the
word, you swill be dead before your heart beats twice."
The Cometae noble who hovered at Thoryx' side
hastily bent toward the angry king. Curt now noticed
this councillor for the first time. The shinning halo of
his electric vitality could not disguise the man's ad-
vanced age. His elderly figure was slightly stooped, his
hair thin and gray, his face a wrinkled mask of cunning
with crafty, watchful eves.
"The stranger does not know our ways, sire," he was
telling the king soothingly. "It would not be wise to or-
der his destruction before we have learned more about
him and his strange companions."
"Very well, Querdel," Thoryx told the old noble
fretfully. "But let him not look at me again so threaten-
ingly. I am master on this world ­ under the Great
Ones, of course."
He added the last words hastily, with a nervous, in-
voluntary glance around the throne, room. Curt sur-
mised the reference was to the Allus.
17
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
Lulain bolted half scornfully at her consort.
"Are we to spend all day in examination of this pris-
oner?" she inquired.
Thoryx addressed himself to Captain Future.
"Why did you and your companions approach the
orbit of this comet?"
Captain Future had got a grip upon his raging emo-
tions by now. Shaken as he was by the terrible surprise
of his encounter with Joan, he still retained enough
presence of mind to realize the wisdom of temporizing.
So he answered the question.
"We did not approach the comet of our own free
will. You dragged our ship in here with your magnet-
beam, as you have kidnapped many other ships of our
worlds."
"Yes," old Querdel agreed craftily. "But those other
ships were all seeking to avoid the comet, while you
were boldly approaching it. Why were you approaching
it?"
Captain Future saw no reason for concealing the
truth.
"We were searching for those other ships," he retort-
ed. "Note we find that it is you Cometae who have
dragged them in here. What could be your reason? The
people of the planetary worlds have never harmed your
race."
"You are not questioning us, prisoner" flared Thoryx
angrily. "It is an order of the Great Canes that we seize
as many ships as possible. Who are you to dispute the
command of the dark masters?"
So, Curt thought swiftly, it was the mysterious Allus
themselves who were behind the capture of the ships.
UERDEL was asking him another question.
"Who are the three strange beings who are your
comrades? They are not human."
Q
"No, they are not human," Curt answered carefully.
"But they are more than human in many respects."
"I thought as much," muttered the old councillor.
His cunning eyes narrowed. "I think that you are dan-
gerous, stranger."
Curt perceived that the outlandish appearance of the
Futuremen was what had made the Cometae take a
deeper interest in him than in ordinary prisoners. He
sensed doubt and apprehension in the attitude of Tho-
ryx.
"We had better destroy all four of them, Querdel,"
declared the king uneasily.
The crafty old councillor, who was obviously the
brain behind the Cometae throne, demurred.
"We should report to the Great Ones first, Your
Highness. They told us to enlist into the Cometae all
captives willing to join us. But these captives are differ-
ent."
Thoryx nodded nervously.
"Communicate with the Great Ones in the usual
way, Querdel. Khinkir, return this insolent prisoner to
his cell."
Captain Future turned without reluctance to leave
the throne room, even though he felt he had learned
nothing concrete about the Allus and their purposes. He
was hoping desperately to get another word with Joan
on the way out.
But his hopes were dashed. For Joan Randall was no
longer to be seen in the brilliant throng of Cometae.
She had apparently withdrawn. Crushed by a heavy
burden of fear and anxiety for her sake, Curt unseeingly
accompanied his alert guards back across the plaza to
the prison building.
As they, approached the cell in which the Futuremen
were confined, prison Captain Zarn hastily made his
exit. He showed confusion.
"What were you doing in the cell with the
prisoners?" Khinkir demanded.
"The three strange ones were fighting among them-
selves. I went in to stop them," Zarn explained nervous-
ly.
"It might have been a trick to gain their escape,"
snapped Khinkir. "Do not enter their cell again, for
these four prisoners are dangerous. And where are the
guards I ordered you to post at this door?"
"I was just going to get them," Zarn answered quick-
ly. When Curt entered the cell, the Futuremen came to-
ward him at once. Otho asked the question they all had
foremost in their minds.
"Did you find out anything about Joan?"
Curt Newton nodded heavily.
"I saw her. She is one of the Cometae now."
They stared incredulously. Then Otho began to rave.
"The devils! They forced her to become an electric
monstrosity like themselves!"
"She said she became one of them by her own
freewill,'' Curt told them miserably.
But the Brain asked a shrewd question.
"When you and she talked there ­ did you converse
in English?"
"Of course," Curt nodded.
"Then," pointed out the Brain, "why did she have to
pretend to you at all? Your Cometae guards couldn't un-
derstand your conversation."
Fingers of doubt clutched sickeningly at Curt's
brain, poisoning his thoughts. With a violent effort he
broke their grasp.
"This isn't a time to be doubting Joan, but to be
helping her!" he exclaimed. "We've got to find a way to
bring her out of that horrible electric existence!"
"Yes, lad, everything depends on our finding such a
way," the Brain told him soothingly. Simon went on to
relate what Zarn had said.
"The Cometae people will revolt against their
rulers," he concluded, "if they can only be sure that we
can retransform them afterward to normal men and
18
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
women."
APTAIN FUTURE paced agitatedly to and fro.
"But how can we find the answer to that scientific
secret in sufficient time?" he asked desperately.
C
"We shall not be wholly without instruments, if
Zarn does not fail us," the Brain interposed. "He
promised to try to bring certain apparatus from our
ship, if it was possible `tonight'."
"Then we may have a chance, though it's still a gam-
ble," Curt muttered. "When will he be here?"
"Soon after the sleep-period begins, if he is success-
ful," answered Simon. "I described for him the electro-
chemical apparatus I thought we'd need."
Grag snorted gloomily.
"Maybe these guards that Khinkir made him post
outside our cell now will spoil the whole thing."
"Always cheerful and optimistic, that's Grag," Otho
chimed in sarcastically. "Why don't you get a job haunt-
ing some dead planet?"
As they waited for "night," Curt's turmoil of spirit
did not lessen. His feverish impatience was finally bro-
ken by the sound of steps down the corridor. The Fu-
turemen listened tensely as the steps approached. Then
they heard a low challenge from the guards posted out-
side their door, and the voice of Zarn replying.
CHAPTER VII
Desperate Research
HE door opened and Zarn came in. The prison cap-
tain clutched a bundle of scientific apparatus in his
arms, and his shining face showed an extreme nervous
excitement. With him was another man of the Cometae
­ a big, hulking, craggy-featured soldier who stared at
the Futuremen.
T
"This is Aggar, a captain and one of my friends."
Zarn introduced him quickly. "He is one of us Cometae
who have long desired to revolt against our heartless
rulers."
Zarn put down the bundle of apparatus.
"I think I got everything you described from your
ship," he told the Brain. "It was not easy to do so unob-
served. But I got in here safely with it, for I had taken
care to post guards `tonight' who are of our secret par-
ty."
"You have already spoken to your friends among the
Cometae about a possible revolt?" Captain Future asked
Zarn quickly.
The prison captain bobbed his head.
"We potential rebels have an undercover organiza-
tion. I made contact with its heads, of whom Agar is
one. They long to rise against the tyrants, against Tho-
ryx and that old devil Querdel. But they will not do so
unless certain that success will make it possible for us
to be normal men once more."
The hard-fisted Aggar spoke bluntly to Curt.
"Can you do that, stranger? Can you use those in-
struments to match the science of the Allus and undo
what the Allus did to us?"
"I can't tell without some study," Captain Future an-
swered honestly. "And my comrades and I would like
the help of the man in the next cell ­ the Martian scien-
tist Tiko Thrin. Can you get him in here, Zarn, and also
the man named Ezra Gurney?"
"Yes, I can do that," said Zarn, and hurriedly left the
cell.
He was back in a fete moments and with him cane
two men. One was an elderly little Martian, a small,
withered creature with an incongruously big and bald
red head, and weak eyes which peered through thick
spectacles.
But it was the other man toward whom the Future-
men jumped with an exclamation of delight. This one
was elderly, too, a wrinkled-faced Earthman with iron-
gray hair and faded blue eyes, whose bleak depths now
were sparkling with pleasure.
"Ezra Gurney!" Captain Future wrung the old Planet
Patrol veteran's hand. "You old buzzard of space. If
there's trouble anywhere in the System, you'll find it."
"Yes, an' I found plenty of it in this cursed comet,
Cap'n Future," said Ezra earnestly in his drawling
voice. "Did you find Joan?"
Curt's face darkened.
"Yes. She's become one of the Cometae."
Ezra uttered an incredulous oath.
"It's impossible! She'd never accept that Thoryx' of-
fer to join them!"
"She did it only for some purpose we don't know,"
Curt declared stoutly. "I'm convinced of that."
Yet, even as he spoke, he had to force down that
haunting doubt that had poisoned his thoughts ever
since Joan had spoken to him so strangely.
Meantime Grag and Otho were slapping the old vet-
eran on the back in high glee at the reunion. Even Oog
and Eek, recognizing an old friend, had come trotting
up eagerly from their corner.
Zarn intruded then. The face of the Cometae captain
was anxious.
"We may be interrupted at any moment!" he warned.
"Khinkir and other officers loyal to Thoryx often come
snooping about this prison."
Curt rapidly explained to Tiko Thrin what they had
in mind.
"You have been here, observing the Cometae, for
some time," he told the old Martian scientist. "What do
you think of the possibility of re-transforming them?"
Tiko Thrin wagged his head doubtfully.
"We can only try. It will not be easy. The science of
the Allus may be far beyond our own."
19
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
APTAIN FUTURE addressed Zarn and Aggar,
who were waiting tensely, while the Brain and
Otho set up the compact electron microscope, ray
probers and other delicate electric apparatus.
C
"We'll need a sample of your tissues," Curt said
slowly to the two Cometae men. "It's the only way we
can make a thorough study of the altered cells of your
bodies."
The big Aggar calmly drew his dagger and poised it
over the skin of his glowing forearm.
"Just tell me how much," he grunted.
Captain Future directed him. The big Cometae cap-
tain coolly cut a thin strip of skin from his forearm and
placed it in the chamber of the electron microscope.
Curt and the Brain bent over the instrument. The ap-
paratus was a compact adaptation of the old-fashioned
electronic microscope, magnifying almost indefinitely
by using magnetic action to focus rays of free electrons,
instead of a lens to focus rays of fight.
The strip of tissue still glowed with scintillating
light under the microscope, although its luminescence
seemed to be fading. Curt focused down until he was
examining a single cell of that changing tissue. Ire and
the Brain, and then Otho and Tiko Thrin, studied the
enormously magnified cell.
As he straightened, Tiko Thrin shook his head.
"I'm afraid it's beyond me," he confessed. "The
whole molecular pattern of the cell has been altered be-
yond recognition. I can't see how the Allus did it or
how it can be undone."
"Curse it, the Allus must be gods or devils to accom-
plish a thing like this!" Otho swore.
The Brain was looking at Captain Future.
"Not only molecular change, but also atomic, lad,"
said Simon.
Curt nodded his red head, frowning deeply.
"Yes. Some force has been utilized to break down
each cell's molecules, not only into atoms but into sub-
atomic particles ­ and then recast them in a wholly new
pattern."
Captain Future was feeling a sensation he had never
experienced before. This unthinkable tampering with
the finest units of life was evidence of a science vast
and alien beyond conception.
"Can you undo what was done to us, Captain
Future?" Captain Yarn asked anxiously.
Curt knew that the hopes of a race hung upon his re-
ply. That the fate of Joan Randall hung upon it, too. Yet
he couldn't answer in an unqualified affirmative, much
as he would have liked to do so.
"I feel certain," he said slowly, "that this process can
be undone, that the molecular and atomic pattern of
your cells can be recast to normal by the right force.
But it will not be an easy thing to do!
"You see," he explained, "the living cell is normally
a tiny electric `battery,' that by chemical action pro-
duces the electric energy which we call life. But the Al-
lus have worked deep and subtle changes in your cells.
They have recast their molecules and atoms so that now
each cell forms a tiny transformer,' which simply re-
ceives its energy from the coma radiation which perme-
ates everything here."
Zarn and Aggar seemed impressed by Curt's knowl-
edge,
"Then you'll promise to change us all back to normal
if our revolt succeeds?" they cried.
Captain Future took the plunge.
"I promise to restore you to normality ­ or to die try-
ing!
GGAR'S massive face glowed with hope and res-
olution.A"Then we of the Cometae will rise!"
Curt seized the opportunity.
"How many of your people will revolt against Tho-
ryx?" he asked quickly. "How soon can you organize
and strike?"
"Nine-tenths of the Cometae hate our rulers," Aggar
replied. "But not all of them will risk rebellion, at first.
Our secret organization is what we must chiefly rely on.
We number fully five thousand men."
"How many fighting men can Thoryx count on?"
Otho demanded.
"About as many," Aggar admitted. "The regiments
of the palace guard are loyal to him, because they are a
favored class. The nobles, of course, will support Tho-
ryx. So will some of the people, because of their super-
stitious regard for the Allus."
"What about weapons?" Curt asked him. "Can you
secure enough of those electrode-weapons?"
Aggar laughed.
"They would be of no avail against Cometae. They
simply project a powerful electric blast, and that would-
n't hurt one of us in the least. The things are used only
to keep you captives under control."
"Then what the devil do you use for weapons
against each other?" Otho exclaimed.
"Swords and daggers are all that can be used effec-
tively on a Cometae," Zarn answered. "Only the sol-
diers are allowed to possess them."
"All us captives here can fight with you, if you can
get swords of dielectric material for us," Curt told Zarn
quickly. "You know we can't touch you Cometae, even
with an ordinary metal sword, without receiving a para-
lyzing electric shock."
"I can touch them!" said Grag loudly. To prove it, he
laid his heavy metal hand capon Zarn's shoulder. "It's
only inside me that I have steelite parts. The whole out-
side of my body is of dielectric metal, a non-
conductor!"
"Good of Grag!" chuckled Ezra Gurney. "You won't
need any sword."
20
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"Yeah, for once your dumb metal carcass will come
in handy," said Otho gibingly.
"How soon can you strike?" Curt was asking Aggar
intently. "What is your plan?"
"The only possible plan," replied Aggar, "is to at-
tack the palace, overcome Thoryx' guards in the first
rush, and round up the tyrant and his spitfire queen and
the nobles in short order."
"Especially," put in Zarn anxiously, "it is necessary
to grab that old wizard Querdel at once. It's said that he
has a way of communicating with the Allus."
Captain Future saw again that chill shadow of dread
creep into the eyes of the two Cometae captains at men-
tion of the Allus. But Aggar forced the fear away.
"The Allus have never come out of their citadel in
the north, and they won't now," the husky fighter said
emphatically. He turned to Captain Future. "We can be
ready to strike by tomorrow `night'. It's the `night' of the
Lightning Feast, and Thoryx and all the nobility will be
gathered in the palace, ours for the taking."
The plan was quickly arranged. Aggar and Zarn
were to mobilize the Cometae rebels around the plaza
when the next `night' carne. Zarn would release the Fu-
turemen and the other captives. At a given signal, they
would join forces and attack the palace.
"One more thing!" said Curt urgently. "The Earthgirl
who is now one of the Cometae ­ she must not be
harmed under any circumstances."
"Agreed. Now let's get out of here," Zarn warned.
"Everything would be ruined if we were discovered
plotting together."
Tiko Thrin, the Martian, and Ezra Gurney were tak-
en back to their own cells and the door of the Future-
men's cell was relocked.
THO paced to and fro excitedly.
"Action at last: Anything's better than rotting
away in this cell."
O
The Brain looked at Curt.
"The plan is a precarious one, lad. Suppose the Al-
lus should intervene with their mastery of mental
force."
"That's exactly what I don't understand," Grag inter-
posed puzzledly. "All this talk about mental force.
What in the world is it?"
Captain Future explained.
"Thought is basically electrical, like life itself. Grag.
When a man thinks or wills something, the synaptic
pattern of his brain cells conducts to his nerves a defi-
nite electrical current, which energizes his physical
body to obey that thought or will.
"Theoretically," Curt added, "it should be possible
for a man to `broadcast' his electric thought or will-im-
pulses, as electromagnetic vibrations that would im-
pinge upon and seize control of another man's brain and
body.
"That's what is meant by mental force. No man has
ever possessed more than a fraction of this power. But
it seems the Allus have mastered it."
The hours of the following day-period passed with
dragging slowness. Tension built up with each passing
hour. Captain Future labored under a growing nervous
strain as "night" approached. He had never felt so tense
at any time in the past, on the threshold of struggle.
"Night" came at last. There was no lessening of the
coma's brilliant light from the window, but in the al-
abaster city outside the passing throngs of Cometae
dwindled away. The sleep-period had come.
Curt, watching tautly from the window, saw more
and more of the six-wheeled Cometae vehicles arriving
at the great palace across the plaza. The nobility of the
Cometae were streaming into the big building.
"They're coming for the Lightning Feast that Aggar
mentioned," Curt muttered. "I wonder what kind of
function it is, anyway."
"Sounds crazy, like everything else in this cursed
comet," Grag snorted.
"Zarn should be here with the others, by now, to re-
lease us," Captain Future said, biting his lip. "If he's too
late ­"
"I hear him coming now?" Otho exclaimed joyfully.
The tramp of feet was clearly audible.
In a moment their prison door was hung open.
To their surprise and consternation, it was Captain
of the Guards Khinkir and a half-dozen of the palace
sentries who stood there.
'They carried electrode weapons and trained them
uncompromisingly upon the Futuremen.
"You four strangers are to come with us," Khinkir
snapped. "Sentence has been passed upon you. You are
too dangerous, and are to die 'tonight."
CHAPTER VIII
The Lightning Feast
O Captain Future, the announcement was a thun-
derbolt that wrecked all their plans. He could not
keep the sharp momentary dismay out of his face. And
Khinkir saw it, and smiled thinly in triumph.
T
"You learn now what it means to defy the King and
blaspheme the Great Ones, stranger," he rasped. "For
the Great Ones, through the wise Querdel, have decreed
that you four might be a danger and that it is safer to
destroy you at once."
His smile widened.
"'But you will not die ingloriously, strangers. You
are to die at the Lightning Feast. Your destruction will
afford an enjoyable spectacle for our king and court."
Curt Newton desperately decided that since all was
lost, he would perish righting here and now. And
Khinkir read that, too, in his face. The Cometae captain
21
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
recoiled and shouted a sharp order to his men, who
brought their electrode weapons to bear on Captain Fu-
ture's heart.
"Curt!" cried a clear silvery voice in anxious alarm.
Joan Randall had appeared in the corridor outside!
A dazzling electric-gloving figure of beauty, her radiant
face was taut with apprehension.
Khinkir had turned startledly at her cry. The guards,
too, had glanced sideward. That moment was enough
for Grag. The great robot's mighty metal arms reached
out and seized the Cometae captain!
"Kill them!" shrieked Khinkir. But his scream was
choked off as Grag's arms crushed him.
With yells of alarm, the Cometae soldiers triggered
their strange weapons to loose crackling blasts of elec-
tric force at the Futuremen. But Joan had bravely flung
herself against the guards, distracting them and spoiling
their aim. The blasts missed Curt Newton and Otho and
Simon.
One of the electric blasts struck Joan's shining body.
Mad with apprehension for her, Captain Future plunged
in at the soldiers with whom she was struggling.
He touched one of those Cometae guards ­ and was
flung back half senseless by the paralyzing electric
shock of contact. He fought to get to his feet, and was
dimly aware of a tumult of shouting and running about
him.
Curt's eyes began to clear, as the first effects of the
shock passed. Staggering drunkenly, he found himself
witnessing an amazing scene of conflict.
Zarn and Aggar had arrived! With them were a score
of other Cometae. All carried swords, and were hacking
down the Cometae guards who had come with Khinkir.
Even as Curt stumbled forward, the last guard fell a
mangled, radiant corpse.
Khinkir himself lay on the corridor floor, a crushed
and broken thing. And big Grag was straightening grim-
ly.
"I told you that I could touch them!" the robot
boomed.
The Futuremen were all unhurt. But Curt stumbled
toward Joan Randall.
"Joan, are you all right? That electric blast that hit
you ­"
"It couldn't hurt me," she breathed. "No electric
force can harm a Cometae, Curt."
Zarn was close beside Captain Future, speaking
wildly. "We've little time! The alarm will be given
when Khinkir doesn't return to the palace!"
"Release Tiko Thrin and Ezra Gurney and all the
other captives," Curt ordered. "You brought swords for
us?"
"Yes, here they are," said Aggar, pointing to a bun-
dle of long, gray, saberlike weapons. "We had them
hastily forged of dielectric metal. You can use them,
even against the Cometae."
OAN spoke now in a sobbing rush. "Curt, I was
afraid I'd be too late! I came here as soon as I heard
that your executions had been ordered, though I didn't
know what I could do ­"
J
"Joan, tell me quickly," he interrupted. "You didn't
join the Cometae because you really wanted to, did
you?"
"Oh, no, Curt! It broke my heart to have to keep up
that pretense when I met you yesterday in the throne
room."
"But why did you keep it up with me?" he asked be-
wilderedly. "We were talking in our own English,
which the Cometae couldn't understand."
"There were captives who had become Cometae,
like myself, in the throne room," she said earnestly. "If
they'd heard and betrayed me ­"
"Of course. What a fool I was not to think of that!"
Captain Future exclaimed. "But even so, I knew it was-
n't the real you talking."
"Curt, I only pretended to join the Cometae," Joan
cried. "I pretended to be allured by the prospect of im-
mortality ­ but only because I thought it the only way
in which I could learn the secret of this comet's mys-
tery."
She came closer, her eyes wide and haunted as she
looked up at him.
"Curt, there's a threat in this mysterious setup. A
strange, unguessable threat to our Solar System from
those Allus who came from outside our cosmos. It's not
a physical menace, I feel certain of that.
"I'm convinced the Allus have in mind nothing so
crude as a physical attack upon our System. But they
are planning something! They direct everything the
Cometae do, as incomprehensible details of some dark,
baffling plan."
Her shining face was earnest
"I wanted to find out, to carry a warning out to the
System, if warning was needed. So I pretended that I
wanted to become a Cometae and live a deathless elec-
tric life. But I've found out so little!
"I was in an induced mental amnesia when I was
taken to the citadel of the Allus and made a Cometae,
so I remember nothing about them. And I've never seen
any Allus since. I'm certain that only Querdel, Thoryx
and a few others have really seen the Allus. And they
themselves are in deadly fear of the dark masters!"
"But Joan, even if you'd found out anything, you
couldn't have escaped from here to give warning!" Curt
exclaimed. "You couldn't have lived outside the comet,
now that your body feeds on the coma's electric radi-
ance."
"I knew that, Curt. But I thought that if I could get
away in a ship, my ship would be found and my written
warning read ­ even if I died," she answered simply.
Curt Newton felt a lump in his throat as he contem-
plated the girl's matter-of-fact heroism. He took a step
22
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
closer toward her.
"Joan ­"
"Stay back, Curt!" Her warning was a sob. "You
can't touch me now, or ever again. I'm a Cometae!"
Captain Future felt a tumult of emotions such as he
had never experienced before.
"Joan, I'm going to get you out of this terrible elec-
tric existence, no matter what else I do!" he vowed
fiercely. "You and all these Cometae, after our revolt
succeeds!"
By now the other prisoners in the rows of cells had
been released. Tiko Thrin, the little Martian scientist,
and Ezra Gurney were hastening toward Captain Fu-
ture. After them came the other captives of the vanished
spaceships ­ Plutonians, Earthmen, Venusians ­ a be-
wildered, heterogeneous crew.
ARN spoke a warning to Curt Newton.
"We mustn't delay here any longer. The Lightning
Feast will lave begun by now. Our people are waiting!"
"Tiko Thrin, you keep Eek and Oog safe for us here!"
cried Grag.
Z
"Joan, you stay here with Tiko also," Curt told the
girl authoritatively. "No, I won't have you with us!
We'll be back, never fear."
"Oh, Curt ­ be careful!" she cried.
"It's not Thoryx or the guards I'm afraid of, but
Querdel and his evil link with the Allus."
Curt had grabbed up one of the dielectric swords,
and Otho and Ezra and the other released captives were
similarly arming themselves.
"This way!" rumbled the deep voice of Aggar.
The hulking Cometae captain led them through the
corridors of the prison building, toward another en-
trance than that which opened onto the plaza.
"Fiends of Pluto!" gasped old Ezra Gurney, hasten-
ing beside Captain Future. "This, is the queerest bunch
I ever went into a fight with!"
Curt realized the strange spectacle he and his com-
panions must present; the two radiant, electric forms of
Zarn and Aggar leading, he and Ezra just behind them,
the Brain gliding at their side, with lithe Otho and pon-
derous Grag following closely.
Behind them in turn came the fierce-eyed, newly re-
leased Venusians, Earthmen and other captives, fol-
lowed by the score of Cometae, vanguard of the rebels
who had joined forces with Zarn and Aggar.
All had swords for weapons. All were grimly tense
as they emerged from the building into a narrow street
at the rear of the towering prison. Aggar led the way
along it, in a rapid trot.
They met no one. The city Mloon seemed deserted
beneath the flaring coma-sky. It was well into the sleep-
period, and most of the city of the Cometae was
wrapped in slumber.
"We're circling around the plaza to approach the
palace from the rear," Zarn told Captain Future as they
hurried along. "Our comrades were to meet us there at
this hour."
From a branching street of the alabaster city, a solid
mass of armed Cometae poured out to join them a few
moments later. As they hastened on, other bands of the
Cometae were coming in from side streets.
Aggar's secret organization of rebels was function-
ing well. By the time they approached the network of
narrow streets behind the looming palace dome, the
conspirators numbered into the hundreds.
"The others will be on their way here by now," Ag-
gar declared as he signaled to halt. "But there are two
thousand guards inside the palace, and as many more
within easy call."
"What's your plan ­ to rush the entrances?" Captain
Future asked tensely.
"No. The guards would slam the gates on us before
we could get through," grunted the big Cometae rebel.
He turned to his fellow officer.
"Zarn, I'm going inside with a 'small band, by a lit-
tle-used entrance I learned of when I was captain of the
palace guards myself. We'll try to dispose quietly of the
gate guards. You can bring the main force in when you
hear our signal."
"I'm going with you, Aggar," Curt said quietly. And
the other Futuremen and Ezra Gurney hastily chimed
in.
Aggar laughed.
"'All right. The one you call Grag may be useful."
Aggar quickly designated a score of Cometae to ac-
company them. Then he and the Futuremen led the
small band toward the palace.
HE vast, white synthestone structure loomed above
them like a man-made mountain when they
reached its massive rear wall. Aggar led them to a nar-
row entrance in one of the indented angles in the wall.
T
"A servants' entrance," he muttered. "There should
be only two guards on duty. Stay back out of sight."
They remained as he bade them, while Aggar him-
self sheathed his sword and strode boldly toward the in-
conspicuous entrance.
Two Cometae palace guards sprang suddenly from
the entrance and barred his way with drawn swords.
Why are you here, Captain Aggar?" one demanded
suspiciously. "You are not on palace duty any longer."
"You fools? Haven't you heard that Khinkir is dead
and that I've replaced him?" snarled Aggar.
Half convinced, yet still doubtful, the two guards
lowered their swords a little. Then Curt and his com-
panions saw a wonderful feat of swordsmanship.
They saw Aggar suddenly hurl himself forward,
drawing his blade as he plunged its and wielding it like
a brand of light. It ripped into the breast of a Cometae
guard and out again, struck down the other man at the
23
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
very moment his mouth was opened to yell an alarm.
"Hot work," panted Aggar as Curt and the others
came running up. His massive face hardened. "And
don't waste any pity on these palace guards, strangers.
They've long been the instruments of Thoryx's tyranny
over the people. I myself was one of them, until I could
stand such injustice no longer."
They had crowded into the entrance now and stood
inside the palace of the Cometae kings. A narrow corri-
dor, which could be closed by a huge gate of metal, led
to a flight of ascending steps.
"Up this way," said Aggar, hastening up the stairs.
"We're working on scant margin of time now!"
Curt Newton heard then, from somewhere deep
within the great palace, a burst of thrilling, rippling mu-
sic. Long, falling chords quivered in his ears with alien
tonal beauty of muted strings.
"That's from the Lightning Feast," Aggar grunted.
"But it hasn't begun yet or we'd hear it."
They came up into a long gallery, one of a maze of
cross-halls and passages that intersected the palace's
vast bulk. Luxury was evident everywhere here, the al-
abaster walls hung with beautiful tapestries of red and
gold, the floors soft with silken rugs.
Aggar shot rapid orders at the score of Cometae he
had brought along, directing them to work their way
back through the palace and overcome the gate guars at
the main rear entrances.
"Then give the signal. Zarn and the others will pour
in, and all will be on the knees of the gods!" finished
the husky Cometae officer.
He turned to Curt.
"The main force of the palace guards is always close
to Thoryx. They'll be in the great court for the festival.
This way! "
They raced along deserted, splendid halls whose oc-
cupants had apparently all been drawn by the mysteri-
ous festivity. Soon they reached an upper gallery, from
which they could peer down into a large court that seas
situated in a wing of the palace.
The court was circular, open to the flaring coma-
sky. It was two hundred feet in diameter, paved with al-
ternating blocks of red and white that made a beautiful
contrast to the alabaster walls.
T the very center of the court bulked a thing like a
squat, upright copper pillar. Not far from this
stood a wide double throne, upon which King Thoryx
and Queen Lulain were sitting. The old noble, Querdel,
hovered close beside the king, as usual. Scores of
Cometae nobles were standing expectantly around the
court, facing their rulers.
A
Captain Future perceived that a solid ring of palace
guars encircled the rim of the court. In an alcove, musi-
cians played instruments from which rippled the haunt-
ing, alien music that now was loud in all ears. It was
music that pulsed with a fierce, feverish undertone of
expectation and avidity, music that set Curt's pulses
lumping as he listened.
The Futuremen gazed upon this strange scene with
wonder. Upon no far world had they seen a more bril-
liant and unearthly spectacle than was presented by
these radiant Cometae rulers, gathered here for festival
beneath the glow of the comet sky.
Thoryx raised his hand and the music died to an un-
dertone. The king's voice came clearly to the watchers
in the gallery.
"Let the Lightning Feast begin!"
The squat copper pillar at the center of the court be-
gan silently to extend itself upward, like an unfolding
telescope. Higher and higher it extended, until it was a
slim rod reaching hundreds of feet into the sky.
"They're raising the radiance rod." Aggar muttered
tautly. "If we're lucky, the feast will drown out the
noise our men make at the gates."
The Brain hovered over Curt's ear
"That rod is designed to attract increased electric ra-
diation from the coma!" Simon whispered. "Is it possi-
ble that ­"
The sentence was never finished. The copper rod
had now been raised to an unbelievable height above
the palace. As it attracted electric energy from the vast
coma overhead, its whole height was wrapped in a pur-
ple, brushlike flame that grew in intensity with each
minute.
A slender lightning bolt smote from above into the
court! Its jagged white brilliance blinded Curt's eyes for
a second, and its reverberating concussion of thunder
almost deafened him.
But he had seen that thin bolt strike Thoryx, the
king. He had glimpsed the white brilliance of unthink-
able electric energy splashing over the ruler's body.
Then as Captain Future's dazzled eyes cleared, he
heard Thoryx laughing in exhilaration! The king was
unharmed by that jolting stroke.
Now bolt after bolt of dazzling flame was striking in
the court, with continuous shock of thunder. The bolts
were hitting the Cometae nobles, who threw their hands
up as though to welcome and attract the crackling flash-
es, and who laughed in wild intoxication as the light-
ning struck at them.
A mad, unbelievable phantasmagoria, it seemed, as
the almost continuous lightning plated like dancing
witch upon the luminescent, revelry-mad figures of the
Cometae.
"The Lightning Feast!" Aggar was shouting to the
Futuremen. "Electric energy is food, is life itself to us
Cometae. Even the concentrated energy of lightning
cannot harm us, but serves only to stimulate and intoxi-
cate."
24
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
CHAPTER IX
Dark Triumph
HEY turned suddenly from the unearthly specta-
cle, as a mass of armed Cometae came pouring
down the gallery in which they stood. Then they recog-
nized Zarn at the head of these hundreds of men.
T
"Our forces are inside the palace!" cried Zarn above
the shattering reverberations of thunder. "I've ordered
them to spread out through the building, to encircle the
court."
"Good! When they're all in place, I'll give the signal
for attack!" exclaimed Aggar.
"Too late for that ­ look down! There!" yelled Otho.
A Cometae ­ one of the palace guards ­ had flung
himself into the mad festival of lightning in the court.
The man was swordless, wounded, shouting something
in chocking tones.
"One of the gate guards who got away!" roared Ag-
gar. "No time to wait now! Down at them, men! Let
none of the nobles escape!"
A read roar of long-repressed hate answered him
from the throats of the Cometae rebels. Swords gleam-
ing, they charged behind Aggar and the Futuremen to-
ward a stair leading from the gallery down into the
court.
Zarn was shouting alarmedly to Captain Future.
"You strangers can't go into that court! You're not
like us ­ the lightning will destroy you!"
"A little thing like lightning isn't going to keep us
out of this!" Curt Newton exclaimed recklessly.
The court was a scene of mad confusion. From a
dozen entrances, Cometae rebels were pouring in and
fiercely engaging the palace guards. Swords were
gleaming, men going down in death, and the chaos of
lightning and thunder still raged.
Curt glimpsed Thoryx standing in appalled irresolu-
tion, his weak face distorted by alarm. But crafty old
Querdel was fiercely shrilling orders to the guards.
Then Captain Future and his companions clashed
with the guards around the edge of the court. Curt
glimpsed a roaring Cometae soldier lunging toward
him, a shining figure whose sword was stabbing fierce-
ly.
Captain Future parried the blow by a swift stab of
his own dielectric blade, then ran the point through the
man's throat. The guard crumpled to the floor. The
Cometae, deathless as far as age or sickness were con-
cerned, died as swiftly as ordinary men when a vital or-
gan was stricken.
"Cut through them ­ get to the king and the nobles!"
Aggar was yelling fiercely, through the crash of thun-
der.
"Demons of Mars, what a crazy fight!" gasped Otho.
His blade flashed to one side, parrying a blow aimed at
Curt's back. "Did for him!"
The Brain hovered above the battle, coolly calling
Warning to Curt and the others as the guards desperate-
ly shifted their tactics.
All around the court, the defenders were being
pushed inward as the maddened rebels sought to reach
the royal tyrant. Curt as he fought was half blinded ev-
ery few moments by the appalling hiss and crash of
striking threads of lightning.
As Captain Future had banked on, the dancing light-
ning bolts always struck Cometae, attracted by their in-
trinsic electric charge. The bolts could not harm the
Cometae. But their blinding flare and the deafening ex-
plosions of thunder made infernal, unnerving back-
ground for this desperate assault.
Somehow the ring of palace guards held firm around
Thoryx and Lulain, spurred by the undaunted orders of
the clever Querdel.
"We've got to smash through them now before the
other soldiers arrive here from their barracks!" Aggar
was shouting to his Cometae rebels. "Think what you're
fighting for, men! Freedom, the end of tyranny, the
chance to be normal men again!"
And it was at this moment, when desperate resis-
tance held the battle's fate in the balance, that Grag
tipped the scales.
IKE a monstrous metal genie, Grag strode forward
from where he had fought beside Curt Newton.
The great robot's massive metal body could not be
harmed by the swords of the Cometae.
L
He advanced, flailing mighty arms, his huge balled
fists knocking guards aside like tenpins. Swords
stabbed in vain at his metal body. Cometae opponents
leaped on him to pull him down, and were brushed
away. Grag walked through them like a stolid, avenging
giant.
"Come on, Otho ­ what's holding you back?" his
voice boomed back through the thunder.
"Grag's broken the ring! Push through and cut them
up!" Curt yelled.
The attackers plunged forward through the breach.
The circle of palace guards was disintegrating.
A sword touched Curt's right arm. The electric
shock that flew along it from his opponent staggered
him. He struggled fiercely to keep from falling. By su-
perhuman resolve, he transferred his own weapon from
the paralyzed arm to his left hand, and stabbed fiercely
back.
He downed his assailant and pressed on, fighting
like a red-headed fury. Beside him, Otho uttered his
hissing, heart-chilling battle-cry as he slashed and
struck with uncanny swiftness. Ezra Gurney's shrill, ex-
ultant yell came from behind them. Aggar was roaring
orders through the inferno of crashing thunder and dy-
ing screams.
Sheeted lightning flares illumined Grag's figure as
25
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
the dauntless robot strode forward in an orgy of de-
struction, his flail-like arms sweeping all before them.
It was small wonder that the Cometae guards broke be-
fore this awful personification of inhuman vengeance,
upon whom their swords could make no impression.
"They're breaking up! Cut through to Thoryx!"
bawled Aggar's stentorian voice. "Get the tyrant!"
"We've won!" Zarn yelled to Curt, as they swayed
together in the fight. The rebel captain's face was flam-
ing with triumph. "Look, they're trying to flee ­ we've
broken the tyranny forever!"
"Curtis!" came the thin, urgent cry of the Brain from
nearby. "Curtis, listen ­"
There was no time to listen. Captain Future was ex-
changing deadly thrusts with a raging Cometae guard,
who seemed suicidally bent upon slaying Curt Newton
at any risk, to himself.
Curt got through the man's guard, poised for the stab
that would finish the fight. A blinding thread of light-
ning wreathed the Cometae for a second, the blaze and
concussion staggering Captain Future backward.
His opponent, as though drawing new strength from
the lightning stroke, leaped forward as Curt stumbled
over a fallen man. Captain Future desperately swung up
his dielectric sword as he fell ­ and his antagonist liter-
ally spitted himself on it.
"Nice swordwork, Cap'n Future!" cried Ezra Gur-
ney. The old veteran's wrinkled face was flaring with
bloodmad excitement. "We've beat 'em ­ we've got 'em
runnin'!"
Curt saw that it was true. The remnants of the palace
guard were being hacked to pieces. And the nobles
whom they had protected were now being fiercely as-
sailed by Aggar's rebels.
Aggar was bawling continuous orders to his follow-
ers, to cut through to the Cometae king who cowered at
the center of his nobles.
"Kill the tyrant!" echoed Zarn's maddened cry. "Re-
member what we fight for, men!"
"Curtis, listen!"
This time, there was such taut urgency in the rasping
cry of the Brain that Captain Future turned toward him.
Simon right, hovering close by his shoulder, was the
strangest figure in all that weird scene of infernal com-
bat. Dancing flares of lightning glanced off the Brain's
glass lens-eyes as he spoke.
"Curtis, the man Querdel whom you described to me
is escaping! I saw him slip back from the fight a mo-
ment ago ­ yes, there he goes now!"
APTAIN FUTURE, glancing a little wildly around
the crazy, crowded scene, spotted the fleeing noble
for himself. He barely glimpsed the sinister Cometae
councillor as Querdel darted out of the court into a
palace passageway.
C
Instant alarm drummed in Curt's mind. He remem-
bered what Zarn had told them. "It's said that Querdel
has a way of communicating directly with the Allus."
Was that why Querdel was fleeing the fight? There
was no tune to weigh the possibility. Captain Future
plunged across the court toward the passage in which
the old wizard had disappeared.
He had to fight his way half across the court,
through still-resisting Cometae nobles and guards. He
finally won past them and raced into the corridor.
He was aware of the Brain gliding beside him, and
of Grag and Otho racing loyally down the passageway
after him. Then Curt burst into a small, vaulted cham-
ber that had the look of a primitive laboratory. Unfamil-
iar electrical instruments stood around its walls.
But Captain Future's eyes flew to the center of the
room. There stood the radiant figure of the old council-
lor, Querdel. The Cometae noble was facing an enig-
matic object.
The thing was a towering, dull-black globe that was
ten feet in diameter. It rested upon a tripodal metal
pedestal. The most arresting feature teas the fact that its
deadblack spherical surface was covered with a crawl-
ing, metallic film, whose gleaming substance constantly
changed pattern.
Querdel was standing utterly motionless and silent
in front of this strange, looming object. But the terrible
intensity in the old noble's face and eyes as he confront-
ed the globe was significant.
"He's thinking into that thing!" Curt exclaimed
sharply. "It's some kind of transmitter of mental force,
connecting with the Allus ­"
Captain Future plunged forward with his sword
poised. He meant to kill Querdel, without parley. For
Curt sensed terrible danger in the superhuman efforts of
the man to contact the mysterious Allus.
But before he ever reached Querdel, something hap-
pened. The crawling metallic film upon the black
sphere suddenly spun and seethed with inconceivable
rapidity.
Out from the sphere pulsed a wave of what looked
like black light. An emanation of unguessable force, at
sight of which Querdel's strained eyes flamed in wild
triumph.
Curtis, 'look out!" came the thin cry of the Brain.
"He's reached the Allus ­ that's a wave of force ­"
The warning came too late. As it reached Curt's ears,
the pulsing wave of blackness took hold of him.
He stood petrified, rooted to the floor. For he was
experiencing a sensation of mental assault such as he
had never felt before.
Into his brain beat the sharp mental commands of
other minds ­ a collective intelligence so vast and alien,
Captain Future felt his mental defenses tottering and
crashing before its assault.
He knew, in a wild flash of perception, what was
happening to him. He knew that the electric mental pat-
26
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
tern of his own brain was no longer commanding his
body. The will of more powerful minds, broadcast as a
wave of electromagnetic force, had invaded and taken
possession of his brain and body.
"I must not oppose Thoryx and Querdel and their
guards. I must submit to them."
HAT was the command of an alien will, flowing
out from the sphere in a wave of dark, electromag-
netic force to dominate Captain Future and all his fel-
low-rebels!
T
Curt struggled wildly to resist that dominating, hyp-
notic wave of mental force. He could not. He was like a
child in the grasp of a giant. He knew now that the Al-
lus whose aid Querdel had called were mighty indeed.
Yet Curt Newton's fighting soul rallied for an instant
against even this overwhelming attack. By extraordi-
nary mental effort, he opened his lips.
"Grag! Otho!" he gasped to the Futuremen, who
were now bursting into the room. "Get away! Save Joan
and ­ and ­"
He could not finish. His brain was reeling under the
crushing mental attack.
Curt staggered, still trying to resist as his last mental
defenses crumbled. He glimpsed the triumph on
Querdel's evil old face. He saw the dark wave pulsing
out through the corridors and courts of the entire
palace.
Then his mind was crushed into complete senseless
acquiescence.
CHAPTER X
Road to Mystery
THO had been fighting furiously in the court of
the Lightning Feast, helping Zarn and Aggar and
their followers to break the resistance of the demoral-
ized palace guards. Then the android glimpsed Captain
Future and Simon racing into the corridor in pursuit of
Querdel.
O
At once, Otho broke off to follow them. Even in the
fierce blood-madness that always swept him in battle,
the android's prime loyalty yeas always to his beloved,
red-haired leader. As he plunged after Curt and Simon,
he yelled to Grag.
"Come on, Grag ­ the chief needs us!"
Grag came hurrying clankingly with him, stolidly
brushing aside unfortunate Cometae who got in his
way. A moment later Otho and Grag burst into the
vaulted laboratory of Querdel. They halted, appalled by
the weird spectacle before them.
From the great black sphere at the center of the
room, the wave of dark, hazy force had pulsed out to
engulf Captain Future and the Brain. It was flowing
around Querdel, too, but the old Cometae councillor
showed nothing but triumph on his evil features.
But Curt's face was ghastly as Otho had never be-
fore seen it. An agony of mental struggle was in Cap-
tain Future's eyes as he gasped out a few words.
"Grag! Otho! Get away ­ save Joan ­ and ­"
Curt did not finish the words. Grag and Otho saw
Captain Future's agonized face become suddenly mask-
like, expressionless. They saw Curt stand now as stiff
as a statue, staring stonily into nothingness. And the
Brain, too, was poised, speechless, motionless.
Otho realized instantly that it was that pulsing aura
of black force which had somehow overcome his lead-
er. But the android plunged recklessly right into the
dark, outward-welling haze. He clutched wildly at Cap-
tain Future's arm.
Chief, what's the matter?" he cried. "Wake up!"
Then Otho, too, felt a dim, chill sensation of alien
forces seeking to invade and master his mind, of the at-
tack of a powerful intelligence.
But Otho resisted that mental assault to which Curt
and Simon had fallen victims! The android resisted, and
so did Grag. They stood their ground, unheeding the
flowing dark haze from the sphere, trying frantically to
awaken Curt and the Brain from their strange stupor.
"Otho!" yelled Grag suddenly. "That old devil who
did this has got away!"
The android whirled fiercely. It was true. Querdel
had taken advantage of their moment of desperate dis-
traction to slip from the room.
Both Grag and Otho raced furiously down the pas-
sage by which they had comet to overtake and kill the
Cometae wizard who had called forth the power of the
Allus.
That haze of unimaginable mental force, emanating
from the laboratory Grag and Otho had just left had
pulsed outward to invest the whole palace. It was all
about them like a nightmare dusk as they sped down the
corridor, yet still it seemed not to affect them.
They burst back out into the palace court, looking
about fiercely for Querdel. Then they forgot the wizard
in the horror of the sight they witnessed.
Fighting between Cometae rebels and palace guards
had suddenly ended. It had been ended by the pulsing
dusk of force that now pervaded everything. Under the
influence of that terrible pall, the Cometae rebels had
dropped their weapons and stood about like mindless
automatons, where a moment before they had been
shouting their victory.
UT the Cometae palace guards and nobles re-
mained unaffected by the weird force. They were
disarming the stricken rebels, who could no longer re-
sist them. Thoryx was shouting angry orders.
B
"Secure every rebel! Be sure to get the leaders!" he
shrilled vindictively. "We'll teach the people what it
means to challenge us, chosen by the Allus!"
27
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
Querdel, who had reached the king, pointed at the
stunned Grag and Otho.
"There are two of the strangers who were ringlead-
ers!"
Cometae guards leaped toward the robot and an-
droid from all sides. With a bull-like roar of rage, Grag
met and hurled them back in broken heaps.
An alarmed cry went up.
"The power of the Allus has not stricken them! They
are devils!"
"They are only two and you are hundreds!" raged
Thoryx. "Get the electric blasting weapons and finish
them!"
Grag was momentarily at a loss.
"Otho, what in the name of all the sun-imps are we
going to do?" he yelled. "We'd better get the chief and
Simon and get out!"
Otho whirled, his flaming green eyes instantly tak-
ing in their precarious situation. They were almost
hemmed in by masses of charging Cometae guards,
who had completely cut them off from the passage
leading to the laboratory where Curt and Simon re-
mained stricken.
"We can't get to Simon or the chief now!" Otho
hissed. "And the chief told us to get Joan away. We've
got to do that and come back later. Come on, Grag ­
this way out!"
Otho had spotted their only remaining chance of es-
cape. An entrance in one side of the court remained still
unblocked by guards. The android realized that sinless
they escaped instantly by that opening, the, now-tri-
umphant Cometae guards would bring up weapons ca-
pable of destroying them. Otho knew that the revolt
was now a disastrous failure.
Ordinarily, Otho would not have dreamed of desert-
ing his leader. But Curt's frantic last order to assure
Joan's safety rang in the android's ears. Also he knew
that only by saving themselves from imminent destruc-
tion could they hope later to be of any help to their two
stricken comrades.
Grag comprehended his reasoning. The great robot
plunged ahead with him toward the side entrance.
"After them!" screamed Thoryx through the stillre-
verberating crash of thunder. "They seek to escape!"
Grag and Otho were hurling themselves along a cor-
ridor, the flying figure of the android paces ahead of the
clanking robot.
"Wait ­ I can stop them from pursuing!" Grag
boomed, bringing up short in the corridor.
Grag had spotted one of the barred metal gates de-
signed to close off the corridor. He swung it shut. Then,
instead of trying to lock it, Grag tore out one of the
metal bars by main strength. He literally tied the heavy
metal bar around the two halves of the gate, as though it
had been a length of rope.
"That'll hold them for awhile!" he boomed tri-
umphantly.
They could hear the whole palace in wild uproar
around them. And through it all pulsed the dark haze of
incredible mental force.
Otho and Grag burst into the open air, to find them-
selves at the rear of the looming palace.
"Come on!" the android urged. "If we can reach the
prison, get Joan away in the Comet ­"
Then as they came into sight of the great plaza be-
fore the palace, they halted, baffled. Companies of
Cometae guards were running across it toward the
palace, and other guards were pouring into the prison
across the plaza.
"Now we can't reach the prison or the Comet!" Grag
exclaimed. "It's head for the jungle ­ or else!"
NSTINCTIVELY he and Otho started on a dead run
through the narrow streets, away from the palace and
plaza. They encountered only a few Cometae as they
plunged through the slumbering city, and these few
hastily recoiled from the alarming spectacle presented
by the fierce-eyed android and the monster metal robot.
Within a few minutes, thanks to the city's comparative-
ly small area, they glimpsed ahead of them the green of
the jungle.
I
There was no zone of cultivated land around the
city. The Cometae, who did not rely on food to main-
tain their strange electric life, needed no agricultural
acreage. Only a few hundred yards from the outskirts
brooded the green jungle that blanketed most of this
fantastic world in the comet's heart.
Otho and his metal comrade flung themselves across
the open space and into the jungle's shelter. They found
themselves in a forest of tall, queer trees whose trunks
were green as well as their grotesquely geometrical fo-
liage. Vines and brush choked much of the space be-
tween.
The jungle was a place of translucent green light. At
first, Otho thought this was wholly the effect of coma-
light filtering through the foliage. Then as they slowed
down, he realized that part of the glow came from the
vegetation itself. Tree trunks and branches, as well as
their leaves, shone with a faint, intrinsic luminance.
"This is far enough," Otho said finally, coming to a
halt. "We mustn't go too far from the city, for we're go-
ing to have to get back in there somehow to help the
chief and Simon and Joan."
His voice grated with frustration.
"Gods of space, how did things fall to pieces so sud-
denly?" he exclaimed.
"It was that old devil Querdel, who called the
Allus!" said Grag, clenching his metal fingers. "That
black sphere was some means of mental communica-
tion with the Allus."
"Yes, the sphere was both a transmitter and a receiv-
er," Otho muttered. "And those mysterious devils, the
28
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
Allus, used it to project a wave of hypnotic mental
force that seized every rebel in the palace."
"But why didn't that wave of force seize us!" Grag
wondered. "We felt it, but it didn't overcome us as at
did the chief and Simon and Ezra, and all the rest."
"Grag, I think I understand why we were able to re-
sist it!" Otho exclaimed. "The others are all humans ­
even Simon's brain is that of an ordinary homo sapiens.
Apparently the Allus knew just what kind of mental
force to utilize that would overpower a human brain.
"But you and I are not ordinary humans, Grag," the
android went on excitedly. "Our bodies, our brains, are
of artificial origin and differ in pattern. The Allus'
weapon of hypnotic force missed fire against us for a
very fundamental reason. We're a couple of minds such
as they never ran up against before!"
"Well, now what are we going to do?" Grag de-
manded practically.
Otho shook his head gloomily.
"I haven't figured it out yet."
He threw himself down upon the grass, leaning back
against the faintly luminous green trunk of a big tree.
But an instant after he did so, Otho bounded to his feet
with an involuntary yell of pain.
"What are you trying to do ­ howl out to everyone
where we are?" Grag reprimanded him.
"You touch that tree and you'd howl, too!" Otho ex-
claimed. "I got the devil of an electric shock from it."
"A shock from a tree? You're dreaming!" Grag
scoffed.
HE robot advanced his metal hand toward the lu-
minous green trunk. A spark immediately briged
the gap.
T
"Why, it's true! All these trees and thus vegetation
are electrically charged!" Grag exclaimed, marveling.
"Now I understand," Otho declared after inspection
of the growths. "This vegetation relies on the electrical
radiation of the coma, instead of on sunlight, for its
agent of photosynthesis. It must contain either a variant
of chlorophyll or a totally different substance, capable
of absorbing the electric radiation as a photosynthetic
force. The process builds up 'a small charge in every
plant and tree ­"
Grag suddenly interrupted with a tense gesture.
"Listen, someone's coming!"
Otho froze instantly. They stood in the middle of the
glade, listening. Then Otho, too, heard the stealthy
rustling.
"Cometae coming after us!" he whispered hissingly.
"Thoryx' guards must have found our trail! And we
have no weapons ­"
The stealthy sounds filtered to them through the
brush from the direction of the city. Both the lithe an-
droid and the towering metal robot braced themselves
for a hopeless battle.
Then a small gray shape burst out of the brush and
derv toward Crag, to caper in 'frantic, soundless joy
around his metal feet.
"Why, it's Eek!" the robot said happily.
It was indeed the little gray moon-pup. His beady
eyes were glistening with joy and his whole body was
wriggling wildly as Crag picked him up. An instant lat-
er, Oog's fat, white little figure appeared also. The me-
teormimic waddled over to Otho and went through a
bewildering series of protean changes expressive of his
excitement.
"Now how in the name of the sun did they get
here?" Otho marveled. "We left them with Tiko Thrin
and Joan, back there in the prison."
"Tiko and Joan must have been seized by Thoryx'
guards, same as the other rebels," Crag asserted. "That
would scare Eek and he'd try to find me. He could do it,
with his telepathic sense. Oog just followed him."
The two Futuremen now held a council of war. They
decided to circle around through the jungle to the other
side of the city, to find a place of concealment until the
next "night." Then they would make the precarious at-
tempt to get back into Mloon to free Curt and the rest.
So robot and android started through the luminous
green forest. They made a strange pair as they swung
along ­ the giant metal robot with his moon-pup cling-
ing to his shoulder, and the lithe, fierce-eyed android,
whose fat little pet cuddled affectionately under his
arm.
Grag, who was leading, suddenly stopped. He made
a gesture of warning. Otho hastily came to his side.
There was a break in the jungle ahead. It was a narrow
ribbon of smooth white synthestone road ­ a highway
that began at Mloon and ran straight north through the
forest.
"I never noticed this road before," Crag declared.
"Since the Cometae didn't mention any other cities,
where do you suppose it leads?"
"It leads north, and that means it leads to the citadel
of the cursed Allus," Otho guessed immediately. "Come
on, let's get across it and out of sight."
At that moment they heard a humming sound, rapid-
ly growing louder. It came from the south. Grag and
Ocho hastily dived back into the brush.
They glimpsed one of the torpedo-shaped, six-
wheeled power vehicles of the Cometae approaching
from the south with great speed. The vehicle whizzed
past them. But its occupants remained photographed on
their minds.
COMETAE soldier was driving the strange car.
Beside him sat old Querdel. And in the rear of the
machine lay a prone figure with red hair.
A
"That was the chief!" yelled Otho as the car streaked
out of sight. "That figure in the back ­ that was Curt
himself!"
29
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
Both he and Grag rushed back out onto the highway
in a vain effort to overtake the car. But it had already
vanished. After their first frenzied sprint along the
highway, they realized the futility.
"That devil Querdel is taking the chief to the citadel
of the Allus!" raged the android. "Why didn't we kill
that wizard when we had the chance?"
Grag balled his mighty fists.
"They're not going to do anything to him. We're go-
ing to his rescue!"
As indomitably as though they had but a few miles
to go, the two Futuremen started forward along the
white highway in a swinging trot.
The endurance of Grag was practically limitless.
And that of Otho's artificial body was almost as great.
These two could stand indefinite exertion that would
kill an ordinary man. For hour after hour, they followed
the highway north through the jungle.
They met no one on that road. Hours passed, as they
trotted grimly northward. It was hard to measure time,
for the coma-sky that flamed overhead never changed.
Oog whimpered with hunger. Eek cowered in fright on
Grag's mighty shoulder, as flame-winged birds or flying
reptiles flashed across the highway from the jungle.
They knew they had covered many scores of miles,
and yet the road went endlessly on. Then, through the
scintillating haze, they glimpsed the outlines of a small
black mountain ahead of them.
They came closer. Both Futuremen cried out in
amazement. It was not a small mountain that loomed
ahead. It was a black structure of mountainous bulk, ris-
ing stupendously from the luminous green forest.
"The citadel of the Allus!" whispered Otho, his slant
eyes aflame. "Gods of space, what kind of beings are
they?"
The Futuremen had come to the jungle's edge. A few
hundred feet away rose the sky-storming black, eyeless
walls of the sinister enigmatic castle.
The citadel had the shape of a squat, truncated cone.
Its massive walls of black synthestone were blank and
windowless, and sloped slightly inward. The only break
in those walls was an arched entrance, without any kind
of gate or door. The white highway led into this pas-
sage.
"Say, that's a break for us!" Grag exclaimed.
"There's no gate or guards ­ we can walk right in."
"Don't be an idiot!" hissed Otho. "If the Allus have
no gate or guards, it's because they don't need there. Get
it through your iron skull that we're up against creatures
such as our cosmos has never seen before. I'd as soon
dive into the sun as to walk through that entrance."
"But the chief's in there ­ we've got to get inside,"
Grag anxiously protested.
"Not that way," Otho insisted. His eyes keenly in-
spected the looming wall. "I believe I can climb that
slant wall and get on the roof."
"What good will that do you?" Grag demanded
skeptically.
"I won't know until I try it, will I?" Otho flared. "But
there ought to be some ventilation or other aperture in
the roof."
"But I can't climb it!" Grag complained anxiously.
"I know ­ you'll have to wait here," Otho said hasti-
ly. "Keep Oog and Eek here, too. I'll reconnoiter and
come back for you."
HEN the android wormed himself through the high
grass toward the wall of the mighty citadel. Ibis
rubbery flesh crept at the sensation that he was being
watched by alien eyes from within the blank, massive
pile.
T
Yet he reached the wall without mishap. It resem-
bled the side of a steeply sloping mountain, above him.
Otho could see that the great blocks of synthestone
were tightly joined together by cement.
The Joints gave his incredibly nimble and deft fin-
gers a precarious hold. The inward slant of the wall
helped him. With spidery agility, the android started up
the wall. Clinging to holds from which a bird might
have fallen, using his phenomenal litheness and skill,
Otho climbed higher
The climb seemed endless. He had ascended a thou-
sand feet when he finally reached the roof. He drew
himself onto it with a sigh of relief.
Now he made a startling discovery. The citadel was
ring-shaped. At the center of its roof yawned a circular
opening a hundred yards across. From it projected a
ring of copper electrodes, pointing at the coma-sky.
"What the devil is the meaning of it?" Otho won-
dered.
He crawled silently across the synthestone roof to
the lip of the circular opening. Then he froze, petrified
by the unimaginable terror and strangeness of the scene
which lay before his eyes.
CHAPTER XI
The Allus
URT NEWTON awoke from the hypnotic trance
that had crushed his senses into oblivion. Wonder-
ingly, he looked around him.
C
He was lying on a couch in a small room. The walls,
floor and ceiling were of black synthestone. There was
no window, but there was a door, and the door was
open to a brightly lighted hallway.
"Now what in the name of Pluto's ice-fiends ­" Curt
began bewilderedly.
Suddenly, he remembered everything: the revolt of
the Cometae whom he had helped Aggar and Zarn to
lead; their triumph in the court of the Lightning Feast;
then the escape of Querdel and the dark wave of force
30
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
from the black sphere, which had plunged him into un-
consciousness.
Sharp dismay invaded Captain Future's mind, as he
realized that the others had been overcome like himself.
They must have succumbed, he knew, as he had done.
That meant that the Cometae rebellion was by now
completely crushed, that Thoryx and Querdel ­ and the
Allus ­ still ruled. It meant that Joan Randall must re-
main one of the deathless Cometae.
That thought brought Curt Newton to his feet in an
excess of raging emotion. He was not through yet! He'd
find a way to undo the devilish thing that had been
done to Joan, to overthrow the tyranny that made the
Cometae slaves of unguessably alien masters ...
His rage faded away, and a queer chill possessed
him as he glanced around. This black, cell-like room
did not look as though it was part of any building of the
Cometae City. He had seen not one such black structure
in all that alabaster city.
He suddenly remembered a phrase that Zarn had
used. "The black Citadel of the Allus."
He was in that citadel now! The truth crashed home
to Curt's mind in staggering shock.
Icy certainty possessed his mind. Thoryx and
Querdel and the other Cometae rulers were but pawns
of the Allus. The fact that he had been a ringleader of
the revolt, added to the strangeness of his three unhu-
man comrades, had apparently made the Allus think
him dangerous. They had therefore had him brought
here.
So Curt Newton reasoned swiftly. And his reaction
to the situation was characteristic. A grim, bleak look
entered his gray eyes. His tanned face set in a fighting
expression.
"So ­ I'm up against the real masters now," he mut-
tered. "At least, I ought to find out what they're plan-
ning."
The Allus, the mysterious lords of whom all the
Cometae spoke with such shuddering dread ­ yet whom
none could describe! What was the core of truth in the
fearful stories that he had heard from Zarn and the oth-
ers, Curt wondered.
Was it true that the Allus came from outside the cos-
mos? Did he, Curt Newton, stand now inside the
unimaginable stronghold of beings utterly alien to the
universe? He still could not completely believe that.
His scientist's mind rejected the possibility that the mat-
ter of one universe could ever exist under the physical
laws of a totally strange cosmos.
Above all, what was the Allus' purpose? Whoever or
whatever they were, why had they made of the Cometae
deathless electric slaves? What unimaginable scheme
of extra-cosmic or non-human minds was being hatched
on this weird world inside Halley's comet?
"They can't plan just to kill me out of hand," Captain
Future reasoned. "They could have had their Cometae
underlings do that without delay, once I was senseless.
What do they want of me?"
E turned his attention to the door that led into the
brightly lighted hallway. It was not a real door at
all, but just an opening. There seas no gate or barrier of
any kind.
H
But Captain Future was not so naive as to believe he
had been left completely unguarded. Examining the
opening closely before venturing through, his keen eyes
detected a faint, dark haze across it.
"That might be a barrier of some sort," he muttered.
"I'll soon know."
He thrust his hand swiftly in and out of the haze in
the doorway. Nothing happened. He felt no new sensa-
tion.
Doubtfully he started to walk through the opening
into the hallway. But the moment his figure entered the
haze, Curt suddenly changed his mind about leaving
the room.
"No, I don't want to go out in that hall," he thought
sharply. "I don't want to, at all!"
And he stepped quickly back into the room. Then a
feeling of bewilderment overcame him.
"Why the devil didn't I go on through? Why did I
change my mind? Of course I want to get out of here."
Again he started through the door. But again the mo-
ment he was halfway through he changed his mind and
came back.
He couldn't understand it. Was it some strange,
warning instinct at work?
Nonsense! Curt uttered a low exclamation.
"What a fool I am! That's the barrier! A mental bar-
rier!"
He understood now. That dark haze was a curtain of
hypnotic force across the opening. Incredible mastery
of mental science had devised that intangible curtain to
affect the minds of anyone who attempted entry. That
person would become mesmerized with the powerful
conviction that he did not want to go through the door.
Curt's respect for the mysterious Allus went up sev-
eral notches. Creatures who could invent and utilize
such subtle powers knew more about mental currents
than anyone alive.
"Why lock up your prisoners, when you can simply
make them want to stay in their cells?" he reasoned.
"Clever, simple and economical."
Calmly Curt went back to his couch and sat down.
He was trying, in his clear-minded way, to assemble
from his scanty facts about the Allus a working hypoth-
esis concerning them.
But there was not yet enough data.
Curt felt that there would be facts in plenty before
long, and that they would be highly unpleasant. But he
doubted whether he would ever live long enough to
make use of them.
31
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"No doubts!" Captain Future reprimanded himself
fiercely. "If you're dealing with creatures who use men-
tal force as their chief weapon, doubt and fear would be
fatal."
He sat there, letting his mind rove back to Joan Ran-
dall. He remembered her with vivid clearness as she
had parted from him in that frantic last minute at the
prison, on the eve of the revolt.
Horror and rage shook Curt again as lie remembered
the unearthly, terrible beauty of Joan's altered form. He
swore again that he would somehow win clear and find
the means to restore the girl to normality.
Somewhere here in the Allus' citadel, he knew, was
where it had been done ­ the metamorphosis of Joan
into a Cometae. Here, too, all the other Cometae had
been changed into electric beings. If he had only a sin-
gle hope of finding out how the Allus had done it, of
correlating his and Simon's and Tiko Thrin's researches
to undo the process ­
URT NEWTON suddenly became aware that the
dark haze in the doorway had disappeared. He was
on his feet in an instant, striding toward the opening.
He stepped through the door, half expecting that queer
mental compulsion to operate again and force him back.
C
But this time, nothing happened. He strode through
the opening without hindrance, to find himself in a
long, lighted hallway.
Captain Future smiled grimly.
"They turned off that barrier of mental force by re-
mote control. Which means they want me to come out."
He shrugged coolly.
"All right, gentlemen ­ I'll play."
He was near the end of the long hall now. It was a
passageway with dead-black synthestone walls and
floor, lighted by concealed sources of white brilliance.
It stretched away in a broad arc, curving out of sight.
There was only one way Curt could go ­ down the
hall. He had not the slightest doubt that was where the
Allus intended him to go. Without hesitation, he started
along the curving passageway.
He came to a doorway in the side of the hall. It was
screened by an opaque curtain of dark haze. From the
other side came unfamiliar rustling sounds, and now
and then the clank of metal.
Curt Newton stopped and approached the door. He
wanted to see what was beyond and it. But as soon as
he started through the dark, opaque haze he halted.
He didn't want to go through that doorway! His
whole being clamored against such an action, forcing
him to step hastily back into the hall. He had he knew,
run into another barrier of mental force.
Curt smiled crookedly.
"It seems there's just one way I can go in this rat-
trap, and that's the wav they want me to go."
He went on along the curving passage. There were
other doors in its side, but all of them were curtained by
the opaque haze. He did not try to enter them, for he
knew now it would be quite useless.
Captain Future's nerves were strung to highest pitch.
There was something ghastly about these brooding
black corridors, with their background of uncanny
whisperings and rustlings and their emptiness of all vis-
ible life. The most hideous planetary monster he had
ever met would have been almost a welcome sight in
this forbidding, alien labyrinth.
He had followed the curving hall for several hun-
dred feet, when he came to a door in its wall which was
tot curtained by the dark haze. Curt stopped, staring
ahead at that innocent opening.
"So I'm supposed to go in there. But what if I choose
to keep right on?"
Then he perceived that a little further ahead, one of
the hazy mental-force barriers extended across the hall.
He laughed mirthlessly.
"They leave nothing to chance, it seems."
Deliberately, he approached the open door. His mus-
cles were tense for possible action, though none knew
better than he the futility of physical strength against
the mental masters of this weird stronghold.
Sounds came to him from the room or rooms beyond
the door. They were louder and different sounds than
the mysterious whisperings that had oppressed him. He
sensed in there the presence of more than one individu-
al.
Captain, Future felt a terrific tension. He knew that
he was at last to face the enigmatic masters of the
comet world, the dreaded Allus. Well ­ he was ready
for anything. He would not be surprised if the Allus
were monsters more fearsomely alien than the weirdest
inhabitants of the System's farthest worlds.
E REACHED the door and stepped through it into
a great, brilliant room of cruciform shape. He
halted and stared frozenly at its occupants.
H
"Good God!" Captain Future said huskily. He was
completely overwhelmed by surprise, in spite of his ex-
pectation.
The cruciform chamber itself was astonishing. Its
four alcoves contained an array of apparatus and ma-
chines, of which even Curt Newton's scientifically
trained eyes could tell nothing.
He did dimly recognize a big black sphere, sheathed
by crawling, metallic films. This was the counterpart of
the globe he had seen in Querdel's laboratory ­ the
transmitter-receiver of mental force through which the
Allus had intervened to suppress the Cometae revolt.
But the other apparatus was unguessable. A mas-
sive, barrel-like chamber of copper, with a myriad tiny
lenses set in its floor and ceiling, proved the central at-
traction in a quite bewildering mass of electrical equip-
ment. Other mechanisms were as baffling. Yet the most
32
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
staggering sight of all was the half-dozen individuals at
the center of the cruciform laboratory.
"They can't be the Allus!" Captain Future told him-
self numbly. "They can't be ­"
Yet he knew they were Allus. For some of them
were working leisurely over certain of the unfath-
omable machines, with all the attitude of mastery and
authority. And the rest were staring at Curt Newton ex-
pectantly.
These six Allus were ­ men! Just ordinary, normal-
looking young men like himself! They were not even
electric, like the Cometae. They were dark-haired,
fairskinned young men who might have come straight
from Earth, and who ever wore commonplace zipper-
suits very much like his own.
One of them, a tall, likable young man with clear
blue eyes, advanced a few steps toward Curt Newton.
Ire smiled engagingly.
"Come on in," he said. "We've been expecting you.
My name is Ruun, by the way. I'm sort of a leader
among us Allus."
Curt still couldn't believe his eyes or ears.
"But you can't be the Allus!" he stammered. "Why,
you're only men!"
Ruun laughed, and the other young men chuckled.
"That surprises you, doesn't it? I knew it would. It
surprised Querdel, here, when he first found out that we
were only human."
The Allus leader gestured his dark head as he spoke,
toward a shadow; corner. Curt saw now that the old
Cometae noble stood there, his radiant electric body
shining through the shadows.
Querdel as standing in an attitude of extreme, almost
cringing respect. There was an overpowering awe and
fear in the old wizard's face as he watched the Allus.
Ruun, the young Allus leader, went on in earnest ex-
planation.
"You see, if the Cometae populace knew that we Al-
lus are just ordinary men, they would never obey us.
So, through Querdel and Thoryx, we put out the legend
that we were strange and terrible beings from the un-
known. We played on the superstitions of the Cometae
in that way."
Curt felt a terrific reaction from his previous ten-
sion.
"Then all that talk about your being from an alien
universe was just a hoax?"
Ruun chuckled. "That's it," he said. "Do we look as
though we came from another universe?"
APTAIN FUTURE grinned shakily.
"No, you don't. You look as though you came from
my own world, Earth."
C
"Actually, we're simply part of the Cometae race
ourselves," Ruun explained. "We're a scientific sect
who have been working in seclusion to help our people.
We've made some great discoveries in electricity and
mental force. We even discovered how to make our
people electrically immortal ­ though it seems that now
they're dissatisfied even with immortality."
"But why did you have outside ships dragged into
the comet?" Curt asked bewilderedly. "Why did you
make electric Cometae of your captives?
Ruun shrugged.
"It was wrong to drag those ships in here, I admit.
But we needed certain materials for our research that
we could obtain in no other way. And we thought we
were recompensing the crews of those ships, by offer-
ing them electric immortality."
Curt Newton felt a vast relief. The knowledge that
the Allus had worked a beneficent hoax on the Cometae
put everything in a new light.
"Yet you crushed the revolt of Agar and his men ­"
he said uncertainly.
"Of course. We didn't want any more bloodshed,"
Ruun told him. "If the Cometae people are dissatisfied
with immortality, why, we'll change them back to nor-
mal again. We were only trying to help them."
Ruun went on eagerly.
"We had you brought up here because we think you
can help us, stranger. It's obvious that you possess great
scientific knowledge. We think you may know much
about things outside the comet, which we have had no
chance to learn."
"You'll restore to normal the girl I came here after?"
Curt Newton interposed quickly.
"Why, of course!" Ruun declared. He pointed to the
massive barrel-like chamber in the alcove. "It'll require
only a reversal of that converter's circuits to change her
back to normal, if she doesn't like being immortal."
Curt felt his spirits lift immeasurably. For the first
time, his deep and agonized worry over Joan disap-
peared.
"I'll help you with any knowledge I have, if you're
really working for the good of the Cometae," he said.
"Fine!" exclaimed Ruun. He turned toward Querdel.
"You can go back to Mloon, now. Try to quiet down
the people there."
Querdel, cringing in almost ludicrous respect,
bowed tremblingly and squeezed past Ruun.
The old noble almost ran out of the chamber.
Ruun turned brightly to Captain Future.
"Now, stranger ­"
Abruptly Curt's face had gone dead white. He stared
at the young man and the other Allus with dilated eyes.
His heart was suddenly pounding.
He had seen something, when Querdel had brushed
past Ruun, that had made him doubt his senses. He had
seen Querdel's elbow seemingly past through the solid
body of Ruun!
A ghastly knowledge dawned slowly upon Captain
Future. If the old noble's elbow had passed through Ru-
33
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
un's body, it meant but one thing. It meant that Ruun
wasn't really there at all!
True enough, he saw Ruun and the other Allus; he
could hear them. They were a half-dozen ordinary
young men, as solid and real as himself ­ to the eye.
Ruun was gazing at him puzzledly.
"Why, what's the matter?"
Curt suddenly extended his hand toward the young
Allus leader. He wanted to touch Ruun, to assure him-
self that the fellow was real, that his eyes had just
played a cruel trick upon him.
UT Ruun recoiled swiftly from his touch. And that
furnished conclusive evidence for the conviction
that had formed in Curt's shocked mind.
B
"You're not real, then!" Captain Future said thickly.
"You're not real men at all."
Ruun's clean-cut face flared with anger.
"Are you insane?"
"Whatever you Allus are, you're not men!" Curt
went on stiffly, staring at them. "You made me think
you were. Ah ­ that's it! You're masters of mental sci-
ence. You hypnotized me into believing that I was talk-
ing to men like myself!"
As that bitter enlightenment burst upon Curt New-
ton, a sudden and awful metamorphosis took place in
Ruun and the other Allus.
Their human-seeming bodies abruptly vanished.
And Curt knew that his sudden enlightenment had bro-
ken the hypnotic spell in which they had held him ­ the
spell that had made them seem human.
But what were these six shapes now poised before
him, where Ruun and the others had stood?
Why, they were six black, opaque shadows! But
they were shadows that had a definite form. And that
form was a terrible one.
They emerged as shadows of a horrible travesty on
humanity. The upright figure was that of a lithe, snaky
body, with serpentine arms and legs, and a blunt,
hideously ophidian head from whose face grew a mass
of writhing tentacles.
Yet these ghastly figures were not solid matter, but
were living shadows like dreadful silhouettes of mad-
ness come to life. As though the darkness of outer
space had spawned fearful, nebulous, unhuman chil-
dren.
"Gods of space!" choked Captain Future, staring
wildly.
He knew that he was looking at last upon the true
aspect of the Allus.
CHAPTER XII
Mental Duel
APTAIN FUTURE had faced terrifyingly unhu-
man creatures on many a world in the past. In the
depths of Jupiter's mighty jungles, upon the floor of
Neptune's planetary ocean, on worlds of far-off suns, he
had confronted beings far removed from humanity. Put
never had he felt the impact of such horror as he felt
now, facing the Allus.
C
Had they been solid and real, the terror of it would
have been lessened. Even such hideous serpentine crea-
tures as their outline showed them to be, even those
ghastly faces of writhing tentacles, would not have
been so appalling to look upon.
But it was the fact that they were living, moving
shadows, black and monstrous silhouettes rather than
tangible beings, that gave the last turn of the screw to
Curt's horror. He felt every fiber in his body and brain
clamoring in frantic revulsion.
The black silhouette of the nearest Allus, the one
who had called himself Ruun, moved glidingly toward
Captain Future.
"No! Stay back!" yelled Curt, hardly aware that he
was shouting.
In an excess of mingled horror and loathing, he
struck out frenziedly with his clenched fist. His fist
went right through that opaque black serpentine shad-
ow. He felt no contact with real matter.
He knew then that the Allus were not material,
whatever else they might be. But what were they? Bod-
ies of black gas? Of force? Did they even exist outside
his own chaotic mind? Was he dreaming all this?
"Stand still, Earthman!"
The command rang inside Curt's brain like a clear,
spoken voice. Yet he knew that it had not been spoken.
It had been thought by the Allus, and the thought had
reached his brain.
At the same moment, he felt his mind grasped by a
powerful force. He had the same chilling, uncanny sen-
sation as when the power of the Allus had reached from
Querdel's black sphere to crush the Cometae rebels.
Curt Newton stood rooted to the floor, unable now
to move a muscle. Mentally, he was like a child in the
grasp of these alien, shadowy creatures.
The foremost Allus ­ the one he still thought of as
Ruun ­ was but inches from his face. That dreadful
black silhouette was clear in every ghastly outline
against the background of the lighted laboratory.
Captain Future's dilated eyes now perceived that
from the shadowy black figure of Ruun, a strange, thin
filament led to the end of the cruciform chamber, to
disappear through the solid wall. That filament moved
when Ruun moved, remaining always attached to his
immaterial black figure. Each of the other Allus had
34
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
similar filaments, leading in the same direction out of
the room like weird puppet cords.
"Earthmen, you have penetrated our deception," The
icy mental voice of Ruun was sounding in Curt's brain.
"It is unfortunate that you did so. We Allus hoped to at-
tain our ends with you painlessly, through deceiving
you into willing cooperation. Now we must use other
methods."
Curt found his voice. Ire could not move, but he
could still speak. And strength and resolution were
coming back into his numbed mind.
T was the threat implicit in the monster's words that
had galvanized him out of that deadly numbness.
Curt Newton was a fighter. A challenge, a threat, was
the most powerful of all stimulants to his indomitable
nature.
I
"Then everything you Allus said was a lie," he said
huskily. "You did come from outside our universe! No
part of our cosmos ever spawned creatures such as
you."
"It is true, we came from Outside," replied Ruun's
icy thought. "Your cosmos of curved, three-dimension-
al space is merely a bubble floating in the abyss of ex-
tra-dimensional infinity. In your cosmos, you are like
insects crawling around the inside of a spherical shell.
You have never burst out of the shell, have never pene-
trated the outer abyss in which we Allus live.
"For our home is in that abyss Outside. There,
where the laws of force and matter differ far from the
laws of our universe, we grew to power arid wisdom.
We planned finally to enter the bubble of your cosmos.
Slut, with all our power, we could not open a door
through its shell from our side alone. The door must be
opened from both sides.
"So, Earthman, eve sent our thought through the
wall to the man of the Cometae you call Querdel. We
could contact him. For thought, mental force, could
pass from one universe to another, where matter could
not. We promised him, and promised him truly, that he
might attain immortality, if he would but follow our in-
structions and help us open the door between universes:
"We chose him as our agent, chose a man of this
comet world, because the vast electric power of the
comet would be needed to open that door. And he
opened the door, and we came through."
The commanding mental voice of the alien creature
came more strongly into Curt Newton's brain, as he
stood paralyzed and listening.
"Earthman, why do I tell you these things? It is be-
cause you must realize that we are beings from a uni-
verse vaster than your own. Our powers make resis-
tance on your part a futile folly."
Captain Future's hoarse voice was steady as he
countered with a question.
"Why did you come into our cosmos. What do you
plan?"
There was a tinge of amusement in Ruun's mental
answer.
"Earthman, your thoughts are childishly clear. You
fear we mean harm to your universe, to this little Sys-
tem's worlds. That perhaps we plan to attack them.
"You may dismiss such apprehensions from your
mind, Earthman. We have not the remotest intention of
attacking your petty worlds and peoples. Of what con-
cern can they be to us, the lords of the Outside?"
"I don't believe that," Captain Future spat. "If that is
true, why should you have dragged ships of my worlds
into to this comet, through your Cometae tools?"
The creature answered with bored disdain.
"The Cometae are our servants, it is true. We have
used them, and have made sure that they did not escape,
transforming them into electric creatures who cannot
now survive beyond this comet.
"But we need other servants than these people for
what we plan. We need men from outside the cornet,
men of your System's worlds, whose minds hold scien-
tific knowledge about your cosmos that will be neces-
sary to us in our work here. Men such as you, Earth-
man."
"You'll get no knowledge or help from me," Curt
Newton answered unshakenly. "In spite of your denial,
I'm convinced that you're planning an invasion of my
System or an abduction of its peoples to your worlds."
HE thought-reply of Ruun had a quality of exas-
peration in its icy impact.T"We would not want to live upon your System's pet-
ty planets, even if we could. And we could not abduct
your peoples into our universe, for matter of one uni-
verse cannot exist in the alien dimensional conditions
of another. All that we want out of your cosmos is pow-
er."
"Power? Energy?"
It was as though a searing flash of lightning illumi-
nated Captain Future's mind. He saw it now, the reason
for this long labor of the Allus to penetrate his own cos-
mos.
Ruun had read his thoughts, it seemed.
"Yes, Earthman ­ it is energy that we are after here.
Energy that we Allus need in our home Outside, which
we have come into your cosmos to obtain."
"You mean ­ you'll drain the energy of this whole
comet through your door into the Outside?" Curt whis-
pered unbelievingly.
The energy of this comet comprises not a fraction of
what we need!" throbbed the icy answer. "We require
power on a vast scale. Your universe generates power
on a scale commensurate with our needs.
"We shall have our Cometae servants build here for
us a great transformer, which will first draw into itself
all the energy generated by your sun. That energy will
35
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
flow through the door we have opened, into our world
Outside."
"Of course," the alien being added as an af-
terthought, "our power needs are so great that in time
they will exhaust your sun. But there are many other
suns in this universe. It is not like our own dark, power-
starved universe."
Captain Future had listened in growing horror. At
last he understood the devil-spawned purpose behind
these nightmare creatures from outside the cosmos.
An inter-cosmic theft of energy on a stupendous
scale was what the Allus planned! At the thought of
what that would mean to his own System, of its worlds
starved of all power, of all the radiant energy of the sun
itself being sucked into the outer abyss, apprehension
froze Curt Newton rigid.
The shadowy creature before him now delivered its
ultimatum.
"You can help us willingly with all your knowledge
of thus universe, and be rewarded by electric immortal-
ity. Or you can refuse. In that case, we will strip your
mind of all knowledge and then destroy you immediate-
ly."
Curt's brain seethed with impotent rage. Yet he
knew that anger against the Allus was foolish. They,
the utterly alien offspring of a strange cosmos, saw no
wickedness in the monstrous theft of energy they pro-
posed. The morality of his cosmos was completely out-
side their minds.
With such alien beings, parley would be futile. The
only answer to their plan was to destroy them. Yet how
could that be done? Never had Curt Newton felt so
helpless. His body was petrified by the mental grasp of
the Allus upon his brain. Even had he been free, how
could he harm creatures who seemed wholly immaterial
Shadows?
"You cannot harm us in any way." Ruun read and
answered his thought. "No weapon of this universe
could make the slightest impression upon us. I advise
you to see the folly of resisting our will."
Captain Future made a desperate, rapid decision. To
get himself destroyed would remove all chance of his
acting against the Allus. He must play for time ­ must
pretend to cooperate with them, but must actually with-
hold any information that might be of help.
E had no sooner hit upon this plan than Ruun's
thought impinged upon his mind. And the mental
voice of the creature held an ironic contempt.
H
"Do you really think that we are as easy to deceive
as that, Earthman? I thought I had made you understand
our mastery over you."
Curt realized that Ruun had read the desperate plan
he had formed, even as he had formed it! ''Their knowl-
edge of his mental processes was almost absolute.
"It is regrettable that you did not choose to cooper-
ate willingly with us," the alien being's mental words
continued. "It will require needless time to strip your
mind of all your scientific knowledge. But I perceive
now that this is what we must do, and then destroy
you."
"No!" Curt Newton thought fiercely with all his
mental power. "You'll get nothing from me ­ I'll give
you no knowledge ­"
He concentrated upon mental resistance, seeking to
keep his mind resolutely blank,
But he felt his resistance weakening as the vast,
alien intelligences of the shadowy creatures assailed
him. These masters of mental pressure crushed down
his defenses. He could feel their thoughts probing the
innermost recesses of his memory.
Then came a dark senselessness.
Curt drifted out of unconsciousness, to find himself
still standing in the cruciform laboratory. The group of
shadowy Allus were a short distance from him now,
and appeared to be in deep mental conference.
Captain Future realized what had happened. They
had stripped his mind of all his scientific knowledge!
They now knew everything about the laws of his cos-
mos which he himself knew. He did not doubt that they
were discussing this newly gained knowledge in rela-
tion to their gigantic plan.
Curt realized that for the moment they had relaxed
their mental grip upon him. But he well knew that as
soon as they had made certain of extracting his last
scrap of knowledge, they would destroy him.
His mind searched feverishly for a way out of this
dreadful trap. His body was temporarily free, but he re-
alized the futility of physical action. Neither a physical
attack upon the Allus nor an attempt at flight had the
slightest hope of success. Yet he must somehow keep
them from destroying him, must gain time in which to
work against them
A desperate idea came to him. It was a stratagem
that had perhaps only a slim chance of success, but it
might work if he could keep his mind steady.
The group of nightmare shadows was turning again
toward him, each Allus dragging with him that curious
filament so like an immaterial tether. Again, Captain
Future felt himself seized by Ruun's mental Bras p.
"We have gained much helpful knowledge from
your mind, Earthman," pulsed Ruun's thought. "It is un-
fortunate that we cannot utilize you as a servant, since a
scientist of your caliber would be valuable. But your
very clear hostility to our purposes makes it necessary
to dispose of you."
Captain Future, in this moment, was thinking furi-
ously, concentrating on the idea which had suggested
itself to him.
"They looted all my other scientific knowledge, but
they didn't learn about the thermodynamic constant of
energy-flow in this cosmos!" Curt thought. "They don't
36
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
know that constant will prevent them from ever con-
ducting energy in great volume to their outer universe. I
mustn't let them learn about that. I must keep that factor
hidden in the depths of my mind above all else!"
UUN'S cold thoughts pulsed in sudden sharp
alarm.R"Earthman, have you managed to conceal some of
your knowledge from us? What is this thermodynamic
constant?"
The Allus had taken the bait! There was no such
thing as a thermodynamic constant that would prevent
energy-flow. It was merely scientific gibberish that
Captain Future had improvised for his purpose.
His sole aim was to gain time. The Allus would not
destroy him as long as they believed he had valuable
knowledge which they had not secured. Especially, they
would not destroy him if they thought he possessed se-
cret information about a factor that would thwart their
great plan.
"Tell us!" commanded the Allus leader sharply.
"What is this factor you managed to conceal?"
Curt answered with seeming bewilderment.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You are hiding something from us," Ruun insisted.
"You possess more mental resistance than we had sus-
pected, since you were able to conceal from us the exis-
tence of this important scientific factor."
So far, the Allus had been completely deceived by
Curt's subterfuge. They now thoroughly believed that
he guarded a secret of the scientific laws of this cosmos
which was vital to them.
The Allus were great scientists ­ far greater even
than Captain Future. Yet he had finally managed to de-
ceive them on this one point! For their science was of
an alien universe, and the physical laws of Curt New-
ton's world were wholly strange to them. From their
point of view, it was quite plausible that there might be
some limiting thermodynamic factor, which would up-
set their scheme of stealing the System's energy.
"If you will not tell us willingly, we shall soon take
your secret from your mind forcibly," declared Ruun.
"I know nothing of such a factor, I tell you," insisted
Curt.
His protestations were of no avail. Again the com-
bined mental power of the shadowy entities heat down
his mental defenses.
Again, he went into darkness as they probed his
mind.
When Curt reemerged from that darkness, he sensed
a quality of bafflement in the attitude of the shadowy
figures.
Ruun's thought came ominously.
"Earthman, you are stronger than we supposed.
Even while your mind lay completely helpless before
ours, you managed to persist in your denial of all
knowledge of the thermodynamic factor."
The creatures had read Curt's mind. They had read
there that he knew nothing of the supposed scientific
secret, that it was all a fake. They had read the truth ­
but they had not believed it!
Captain Future had introduced a psychological ele-
ment of doubt into the calculations of the Allus. They
could not be certain now that the thermodynamic factor
did not exist, in spite of the sincere mental denials of
Curt's brain.
They could not be certain, either, that those denials
were not mere pretense on his part.
Curt intercepted an Allus thought.
"Let us destroy this Earthman, Ruun. His so-called
thermodynamic factor is purely an invention."
"You may be right, Siql," was Ruun's cold reply.
"But we must be certain! If there is such a vital factor
regulating energy-flow in this cosmos, we must learn of
it or our whole purpose will be thwarted."
"Physical torture of the Earthman might produce the
truth," came the chilly suggestion of another Allus.
"No. My reading of this man's mind convinces me
that he would remain obdurate to the last degree under
such pressure," replied Ruun.
URT could "hear" this mental discussion, for he
was still gripped by the vast mental force of the
Allus, and hence en rapport with them.
C
"There is another means of forcing him to unfold the
truth," Ruun went on. "As we have already observed,
the intelligence of these human creatures is very largely
subservient to their irrational emotions.
"I have already read in this Earthman's mind that his
strongest emotion concerns a girl of his own race,
whom we made into a Cometae some time ago. I be-
lieve that the threat of physical harm to that girt would
constitute the strongest pressure we could bring upon
him."
Captain Future felt a stab of agonized alarm. If he
had brought terrible danger on Joan ­
He realized instantly that he must suppress such
alarm. But it was too late. Ruun, as always, had read his
thoughts.
"You observe that the Earthman betrays deep fear
lest harm befall the girl," commented the Allus leader.
"This proves that a threat to her safety is the strongest
compulsion we can use upon him. Therefore, I will call
Querdel and order him to return here at once. with that
girl."
The shadowy, monstrous silhouette of the Allus
leader glided toward the black sphere in the alcove,
which Curt had already divined was the means of com-
munication between the Allus and Querdel.
Ruun's special black shape hovered beside the
sphere a moment, then came back.
"Querdel had just reached Mloon. He is starting
37
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
back here at once with the girl," Ruun announced.
"You can't do this!" Captain Future cried: "I tell
you, it was all a fake on my part! There is no thermody-
namic factor!"
"You will return to your cell," came Ruun's com-
manding, icy thought. "We shall summon you for fur-
ther questioning when the girl arrives."
Curt made a frantic mental effort to break free, to at-
tempt somehow to attack the shadowy group. it was
quite futile. The minds that gripped his own sent him
stumbling against his will from the cruciform laborato-
ry, down the long, curving passageway into his prison.
As he entered the little room, the mental compulsion
upon him ceased. But now the curtain of haze had
sprung across the doorway once more. When he tried to
go through it, he found that the mental barrier was im-
passable.
Curt Newton sat down, overwhelmed by a horror
greater than anything he had yet felt. His stratagem had
recoiled upon himself. It had gained him time, but it
had put the girl he loved in deadliest danger. The Allus
would torture her until he told them about the thermo-
dynamic factor.
And he couldn't tell them, for there was no such
thing!
CHAPTER XIII
Secret of the Invaders
THO crouched frozenly upon the roof of the vast
black Allus citadel, gazing down with incredulous
eyes at the fantastic scene within the great central court.
O
"Devils of space!" whispered the stupefied android.
"Have I been using dreamdust?"
In fact, the scene below him seemed more fitting to
a grotesque and terrifying nightmare than to reality.
Otho had seen queer things and places on many a world
and moon, but never anything like this.
The circular open court that pierced the center of the
Allus citadel was three hundred feet in diameter. Since
its depth was the thousand-foot height of the building,
it resembled a huge black well upon the rim of which
Otho was crouched, looking downward.
Around the edge of the court rose a ring of eighty
copper rods, that soared up out of the black well and far
above the citadel roof. The tops of these rods, high
above Otho, were bulbous electrodes, upon which
played a ceaseless violet brush of electrical force. Otho
perceived at once that this mighty ring of electrodes
was designed to milk electrical force from the coma-
sky.
The terrific electric voltage gathered by the copper
rods manifested itself at the bottom of the well as a
crackling, brilliant ring of electric flame. This ring of
flaming force completely encircled the interior of the
court, in a dazzling wall twenty feet high. It was in fact
a ceaseless falling cataract of electric energy.
"There's enough power in that to light up a planet!"
Otho thought astoundedly. "What are they using it for?"
He craned his gaze downward, seeking to discern
details on the court's floor. His eyes fastened on an
enigmatic central object.
"What the devil can that be?" he wondered mysti-
fiedly.
The torrents of flaming electrical energy that walled
in the court were canalized, through massive transform-
ers and conduit cables, toward this central object which
so puzzled hire. Evidently all this stupendous power
was used by the Allus simply for the operation of the
central object.
But what was the thing? It looked like a massive
arched door-frame which stood perpendicularly upon
the black paving. Otho judged it was ten feet high and
almost as wide. This arched frame was of solid copper,
studded every few feet with heavy, bulging coils, to
which were connected the multiple conduit cables that
conveyed electric power.
But inside the opening of this elaborate frame there
was ­ nothing. Nothing but a featureless blackness. It
was as though space itself did not exist inside that mas-
sive arch, so strong was the impression it gave Otho of
utter, lightless emptiness.
"If I could only get down there and see for myself
what it is!" he muttered all his curiosity and passion for
adventure on fire.
Then he realized the practical impossibility. He
might be able to clamber down into the court, though
even that was doubtful, because of the vertical nature of
these inner walls. But even if he could do that, he still
would not be able to penetrate the stupendous ring of
electric flame that aped in the whole court.
"That ring of force would blast me or anyone else
who tried to go through it," Otho admitted to himself.
"But what's it all about? What's that arched frame of
blackness, and why does it have to use such terrific,
constant power?"
He strained his keen eyes desperately to inspect the
object far below.
"It seems to be the very keystone of the Allus'
citadel"
UDDENLY Otho gasped unbelievingly as he
looked downward. He was witnessing something
that made his feeling of nightmare even stronger.
S
A black, shadowy figure was emerging from that
mysterious, coil-framed copper arch. The figure did not
go through the arch ­ it simply came out of it.!
It was like a monstrous, moving silhouette of repul-
sively serpentine outline. Even at this height, Otho's su-
per-keen eyes could detect the essential inhumanity of
that shadow's alien dimensions.
38
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"Gods of space!" he whispered, appalled. "Is that
one of the Allus?"
The opaque black shadowy figure was gliding away
from the arch toward the side of the court. Otho per-
ceived that from that black shape there trailed a thin,
shadowy filament which led back into the mystery-arch
from which the creature had emerged.
The dark figure glided unharmed right through the
encircling wall of electric flame, to disappear through a
doorway which led from the court into the citadel
around it. But Otho could still see the filament of shad-
ow it trailed behind it, which still led into the arch of
mystery.
"What the devil kind of entity is that?" the android
gasped. "Creatures of shadow that come out of a door
to no place, on a shadow-string! Creatures that can
walk through that blasting wall of force!"
He soon saw another of the Allus. For that these
were the mysterious Great Ones, Otho could no longer
doubt.
He saw one of the shadowy creatures coming from
the citadel into the court, gliding into the arch of black-
ness to disappear. In the next minutes, several such be-
ings carne and went through the arch. All of them who
emerged from it trailed that curious shadowy filament
after them.
Otho felt badly upset. It had long been the reckless
android's boast that he was afraid of neither man, beast
or devil. But these Allus were none of the three. As far
as he could see; they were just opaque shadows of
hideous form. But no mere shadows, he knew, could
have mastered a planet as they had mastered this comet
world.
"No wonder the Cometae are scared to death of
those creatures," Otho thought, stunned. "How in the
devil can a man fight a shadow?"
Then a more cheerful thought occurred to him.
"Still, on the other hand, how can a shadow fight a
man? The things may have some queer mental powers,
but aside from that I don't see what they could do. I'll
bet they haven't been able to get the chief down!"
His active mind began to make plans. He and Grag
had to get into the citadel somehow, to help Curt if he
needed aid.
Otho rejected the possibility of entry by climbing
down into this central court. Too many of the shadowy
Allus were coming and going constantly down there.
He'd be sure to be detected, even if he were able to
make it.
The android quickly decided to return to Grag and
explore the exterior of the citadel for a possible way in-
side. There was no opening anywhere to the roof, but
they might find one somewhere in the walls.
Hurriedly Otho retraced his way over the synthe-
stone roof of the mighty pile, and with spidery agility
and quickness climbed back down the outer wall. Then
he raced for the edge of the luminous green jungle.
Grag greeted him with a complaint.
"You took long enough up there! I was beginning to
think they had you. What did you find out?"
"Plenty!" retorted Otho. He told rapidly of what he
had seen.
HE big robot listened incredulously.
"You mean those Allus are nothing but shadows?"T"They look like shadows, but there must be more to
them than that," Otho corrected. "The point is, there's
no practicable way into the place by the roof. We'll
have to look for some crack or window in the wall."
The two Futuremen started to reconnoiter the
mighty citadel, moving around it and keeping always in
the concealment of the jungle. In less than an hour, they
were back where they had started from, baffled. The
structure's whole exterior was blank and without open-
ings, except for the single entrance into which ran the
white road from Mloon.
"Not a chunk big enough for a Mercurian rat to get
through!" exclaimed Otho, exasperated. "Well, there's
only one thing to do. We'll have to dig a tunnel up into
the cursed place."
Grag stared at him.
"Are you crazy? There's that big, wide entrance right
in front of us. We'll go in through it."
"Don't be dumb all your life, Grag!" flared Otho im-
patiently. "Didn't I tell you that entrance would be
guarded somehow by the Allus? A child could see
that."
"Querdel went in and out of it in his power-car," re-
torted Grag. "I saw him come out and speed south,
while I was waiting for you."
"Naturally, the Allus would let Querdel in and out,
for he's one of their tools," Otho pointed out. "But you
can bet a planet that if we tried to walk in there, we'd
run right into a terrible trap."
"We've got to get in, and that door's the only way in,
and so I'm going through it," Grag announced calmly.
And the big metal robot, with Eek still clinging to
his shoulder, stalked straight out of the jungle toward
the entrance of the citadel.
Otho swore furiously, and then hastened after the
robot, with Oog trotting hastily at his heels. The an-
droid caught up with Grag just a few yards outside the
yawning entrance.
"Grag, don't be an idiot!" Otho pleaded. "If you
weren't so cursed thick-headed, you'd know that we'll
never get in this way."
Grag paid no attention. The robot's simple mind was
thoroughly made up. Curt Newton was inside, here was
a way to get in, and he was going that way without any
further talk. Grag could be obstinate upon occasion,
and this was one of the times.
They now could see that the big, open entrance that
39
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
pierced the citadel's massive black wall was curtained
by a zone of dark haze.
"See ­ that haze is a force-barrier of some hind!"
Otho expostulated. "It'll either blast us to bits, or else
set off an alarm that will bring the Altus down on our
heads."
"Aw, it's just a little dark haziness, that's all," replied
Grag with sublime denseness. "There's nothing to be
afraid of."
"Gods of space give me patience!" raved Otho. Then
he uttered a grating laugh. "All right, if you're deter-
mined on committing suicide, I'll join you. I'd just as
soon get killed here and now, as to have to put up with
your company any longer."
And as Grag strode forward into the entrance, Otho
accompanied him with angry despair.
AUTIOUSLY they entered the dark haze that cur-
tained the doorway. They felt nothing whatever.
And in a moment they had passed through it into a big,
vaulted black gallery that was utterly empty. There was
no alarm.
C
"You see?" said Grag blandly. "There wasn't any-
thing to be afraid of."
"I can't understand it!" stammered Otho, his jaw
dropping in amazement. "The Allus must have put that
hazy curtain of force there to bar out intruders! Why, in
the name of all the ten thousand separate devils of the
nine worlds, didn't it keep us out?"
"I'm afraid your nerves aren't very good, Otho," said
Grag patronizingly. The robot looked calmly aroused.
"Let's see what's in here. I don't see how we're going to
find Curt in this big labyrinth."
Dumfounded by the fact that there had been no
alarm or challenge, Otho followed the robot through
one of the doors that pierced the walls of the big inside
gallery.
They found themselves looking into a maze of curv-
ing passageways, hose black recesses were illumined
by a bright, sourceless white light. Otho shrank back
and pulled the robot with him, as he glimpsed two dark
figures gliding across one of the distant corridors.
They were two Altus. The unearthly black, shadowy
creatures of monstrously serpentine outline looked like
dark ghosts as they moved across the distant passage.
They trailed behind them the curious, dragging fila-
ments of shadow that seemed permanently attached to
their weird forms.
So those are the Allus," muttered Grag, as the two
black silhouettes disappeared. "They don't look like any
race I ever saw."
Otho's attention had shifted.
"What the devil is the matter with that cursed moon-
pup?" he demanded angrily.
Eek, crouched on Grag's shoulder, seemed con-
vulsed by a spasm of terror. His little gray body was
trembling violently, and his beady eyes were dilated
with fear as he tried to hide under the robot's arm.
Eek's cowardice was notorious among the Future-
men. He was inclined to scare at anything unfamiliar.
Yet never in the past had the moon-pup exhibited such
abject terror as now.
"He's afraid of the Allus," Grag said solicitously.
"You know, he's strongly telepathic ­ it's the way
moon-dogs communicate. He must be getting some
fearful thoughtimpressions from the Allus in here."
"Say, maybe we can use Eek to find the chief:" Otho
whispered excitedly. "We know Curt's in here some-
where. But if we go blundering around searching for
him, we're sure to be discovered. But Eek ought to be
able to sense Curt telepathically, and lead us to him."
Grag at once accepted the suggestion.
"I'm sure he can do it. I'll tell him what we want."
Grag told Eek by thinking, since that was the way he
always gave his orders to the telepathic moon-pup who
could not speak or hear.
"Find Curt, Eek!" Grag ordered. He added as an in-
ducement, "If you can get to Curt you'll be safe, Eek!"
Safety was what Eek craved most, at the moment.
Galvanized, he scrambled down onto the floor and
started on a run along the outermost of the curving cor-
ridors before them.
The two Futuremen followed, praying inwardly that
they would meet none of the Allus. They believed that
Eek would sense and fearfully avoid the shadowy
aliens, and so it proved. For after leading them for some
minutes along the corridors, Eek darted through a door
in the wall.
HE door was curtained by one of the barriers of
dark, hazy force. That did not prevent the two Fu-
turemen from entering. They found themselves in a
small cell. Eek was leaping and bounding in frantic
pleasure around a man who had risen in astonishment
to his feet.
T
It was Curt Newton.
"Grag! Otho!" exclaimed Captain Future incredu-
lously. "How in the name of all that's holy did you get
in here? Were you captured?"
Otho explained their adventures in swift, excited
phrases. As he did so, the android noted the haggard-
ness and pallor of Curt's features. He thought that he
had never seen such a strain on his leader's face.
"So we walked right in through the front door, and
Eek led us to you!" Otho finished. "Though I still don't
see how in the world we were able to pass the barrier of
force across the entrance."
"Otho, I can understand that," Curt Newton said ea-
gerly. "That barrier is a curtain of mental force ­ a pat-
tern of electromagnetic thought-impulses ­ which im-
presses upon the brain of any man who enters it that he
must on no account go through the door. My cell has
40
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
such a barrier.
"But," Curt continued, "that barrier of electromag-
netic thought-impulses is designed to bar out human in-
truders. Its frequency must be the same as the frequen-
cy of impulses in the human brain. You and Grag,
though, are not ordinary humans.
"Your artificially created brains function at a differ-
ent electrical frequency than the human mind. There-
fore the thought-barriers of the Allus have no effect
upon you two."
"Sure, that's it," said Grag complacently. "I figured
that all out before, and that's why I knew we could pass
the barrier."
"In a space-rat's eye, you did!" retorted Otho wrath-
fully. "You were just dumb enough to try it, and got a
lucky break, that's all. I should have remembered that
the Allus, mental force failed against us before."
Captain Future interrupted with a fiercely impatient
gesture.
"Listen to me! The coming of you two is a godsend.
It may furnish a chance to save Joan from those alien
devils."
"Joan? Is she here?" exclaimed Otho startledly.
"She'll be here soon," Curt answered.
He told rapidly of the intention of the Allus to extort
further information from him by threatening the girl.
"Why, the dirty so-and-sos!" swore Otho. "I'd like to
exterminate the whole shadowy crowd of them!"
"Otho, maybe we can do just that, if we can make a
particular effort," Curt declared feverishly. "The clue
that explains the nature of the Allus is in what you saw
in that central court. I want you to tell me every detail
you noticed, especially about that arched doorway into
nothingness."
Otho complied, quickly describing the entire scene
he had witnessed, when he had spied upon the Allus
from the roof of the citadel.
Captain Future's gray eyes flashed.
"It all fats together," he breathed. "It's incredible,
but I believe it's true."
"You mean, you know now what the Allus are?"
Grag asked, staring.
"I'm sure of it," Curt replied. "There's only one ex-
planation that fits all the facts. The Allus have no mate-
rial existence at all!"
"What are you talking about?" exclaimed Otho dis-
mayedly. "Chief, are you sure you're not delirious?"
"I tell you, it's the only answer," Curt insisted. "The
home of the Allus is in the four-dimensional void out-
side the bubble of our three-dimensional cosmos.
Therefore, the material bodies of the Allus out there
must be fourdimensional matter."
IS eyes flared with excitement.
"Such matter could not enter our three-dimen-
sioned cosmos! That's not just my own opinion. When
H
he questioned me, Ruun remarked that energy could
pass from one universe to the other, whereas matter
could not. Therefore, it's scientifically impossible for
the Allus to exist in our cosmos!"
"The ones in this cursed citadel certainly exist!"
Otho exclaimed. "Why, they've mastered this whole
world!"
They do exist, but rot materially," Curt qualified.
"Those shadowy figures consist not of matter, but of
photons ­ particles of energy!"
Rapidly, Captain Future unfolded the astounding ex-
planation that his brilliant mind had pieced together
frown the scientific evidence.
"The Allus are real, four-dimensional creatures in
habiting the four-dimensional abyss outside our cos-
mos. They needed power, and decided to enter our, cos-
mos and set up here a giant transformer, which would
draw in the energy of our sun and pour it into their own
strange universe. Their initial step was to open a door
between universes, first getting into contact with
Querdel and the Cometae rulers and persuading them to
aid.
"The door was open ­ but the Allus couldn't them-
selves come through it. Their four-dimensional bodies
couldn't exist in our cosmos. But energy, which is di-
mensionless, could pass back and forth through that
door between universes. Atoms, which are particles of
matter, couldn't pass through. But photons, which are
particles of energy, could.
"So the Allus projected artificial bodies of photons
through the door! Their shadowy figures that we see
here are merely photon-patterns, which are directly
connected by those filaments of energy with their tangi-
ble bodies on the other side of the door. They project
their minds along that filament into the black photon-
bodies that we see here. Thus, in those photon-shapes,
the Allus are able to act in this universe."
Captain Future's gray eyes were blazing now.
"It's the only possible scientific explanation. And it
gives us a thousand-to-one chance of ridding our cos-
mos forever of the Allus' threat."
Otho gasped. "I get it, Chief! If we could close that
door ­"
"If we could close the door, it would cut the fila-
ment connection between the Allus' real bodies in the
outer abyss and their photon-bodies here and thus end
all their internal activities in this universe!" Curt fin-
ished for him.
CHAPTER XIV
Curt's Way
HE three comrades gazed at each other with a
common excitement, crouching close together in
the little black cell.
T
41
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
"Can we do it, Chief?" asked Grag quickly. "Can we
close that door?"
"It should be possible," muttered Curt Newton.
"From Otho's description, the mechanism consists of a
frame of super-powered magnetic coils, which set up
intersecting fields that cause an unprecedented spaces-
train. Theoretically, scientists have always known that a
strong enough strain would rip open an aperture in
three-dimensional space. Actually, it's never been done
by any System scientist, because it would require vast
power.
"But the Allus are using vast power-power of this
comet's electric coma. By means of it, they keep the
space-strain always operating, the door constantly open.
They daren't let it close."
"Then if we wrecked those magnet coils, the door
would close?" cried Otho.
Captain Future nodded.
"It would. But can we get at the coils? You said the
wall of electric flame around the court had no break in
it."
"The devil, I forgot that!" exclaimed Otho, crestfall-
en. "And that stumps us. The photon-bodies of the Al-
lus could go through that ring of electric fire, but it
would blast you or me in an instant."
"I don't think it would blast me."' Grag suggested ea-
gerly. "You know the outer surface of my body is di-
electric metal. I'll bet I could get through it."
"I doubt it." Curt hesitated. "Yet there's no other
possibility. Grag, if you're willing, we'll try it. Come on
let's get out of here."
"I thought you couldn't pass through the barrier of
mental force across the door of this cell?" objected
Otho.
"I can't, of my own accord," retorted Curt. "But you
tyro can drag me through it."
"Great space-gods, I never thought of that!" ex-
claimed the android. "Come on, Grag ­ get hold of the
chief."
Grasping Captain Future firmly by the arms, the two
Futuremen approached the cell door. As they entered
the curtain of hazy force across it, a frantic clamor
awoke in Curt's brain.
"I don't want to go out into the hall!" he thought
fiercely. "I don't want to leave the cell!"
His obsession was so powerful that he struggled
fiercely to pull back into his prison. But Grag's great
grip dragged him out through the hazy curtain, despite
his resistance. The moment they were out in the corri-
dor and clear of the mental barrier, Curt's mental revul-
sion ceased to exist.
"Thanks, boys!" he muttered. "Now we've got to
find a way to that central court where the door is locat-
ed. It should be in this direction. I suppose we have not
much chance of reaching it without the Allus' knowl-
edge."
"I've got Eek here with me," drag told him. "He's
scared to death of the Allus, and can sense them long
before we can see them. He'll warn us of any of them
ahead."
They began the hazardous search through the
labyrinthine halls and corridors of the vast black
citadel. Twice in the next few minutes, Eek, showed
wild panic when they were about to enter passageways.
They hastily took other turnings, knowing that the little
moon-pup had sensed Allus ahead.
They passed unoccupied laboratories and supply
rooms, in which lay great masses of mechanisms and
apparatus of totally new and unfamiliar design.
Curt guessed that these were part of the giant trans-
former the Allus planned to build, for the theft of limit-
less power from this cosmos.
NCE only Eek's panicky warning enabled them to
shrink back as one of the dark Allus glided across
the corridor ahead. Curt was near despair. Their time
was short, for soon Querdel would arrive with Joan.
Then he Allus would summon him and find him gone
from his cell.
O
They entered a corridor, whose far end blazed with a
sunlike brilliance that outshone the citadel's sourceless
illumination.
"That's the court of the door!" Otho hissed.
They hastened forward to the end of the passage-
way, and then crouched concealed in its mouth and
gazed out into the court stunned.
Ten feet from them towered the blinding, crackling
wall of electrical fare whose unguessable energy
poured down like a cataract from the tall electrode rods.
This wall of electricity, encircling the whole interior of
the court, formed a blinding barrier to their vision.
Captain Future strained his eyes to peer through the
flaming barrier. He could only dimly descry the mas-
sive apparatus at the center of the court ­ the ponderous
copper arch of the door, and the heavy magnet coils
that studded that arch.
A few Allus were coming and going, passing
through the wall of crackling flame as though it did not
exist. They were fortunately using other entrances of
the citadel than the one in which the Futuremen
crouched, but Curt realized that discovery might come
at any rune.
"Look, you can see all those filaments of energy that
connect them with the door." Otho whispered, pointing.
Curt counted no less than twenty of the shadowy
threads that led from the door through the electric barri-
er.
"Then there's no more than twenty of the Allus in
the Citadel!" Curt muttered incredulously. "Twenty ­
and they've mastered a world!"
"Shall I go through the electric wall now, Chief?"
Grag asked eagerly. "See, there's no Allus out there
42
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
right now"
"Yes ­ try to make it, Grag," Captain Future said
tensely. "If you get through, wreck those coils around
the door. All depends on you."
An opportunity had come to them sooner than Curt
had hoped. For the moment, there were none of the
dark Allus anywhere in the court. Grag hastily strode
out toward the blinding, crackling wall of electric
flame. The giant robot stalked right into the cataract of
force.
They saw Grag stagger and stop. The robot swayed
drunkenly, half hidden from view by the torrents of rav-
ing, brilliant energy that were overwhelming him. Then
Grag fell backward out of the wall of flange and lay
motionless on the paving.
"He couldn't get through!" Captain Future ex-
claimed. "Quick, Otho ­ help me get him in here!"
They darted out to the fallen robot. He had fallen
clear of the crackling cataract, and they were able to
seize his massive metal body and drag it back into the
precarious concealment of their passageway.
Grag lay utterly lifeless. Curt hastily unclamped the
broad metal chestplate of the robot's mechanical body,
then peered into the maze of intricate wiring and appa-
ratus that constituted Grag's vital organs.
"The electricity of the wall got through his outer in-
sulation and short-circuited his electric 'nerves'," Curt
said quickly. "His nerve-fuses are blown out."
T TOOK Captain Future but a few moments to re-
place the fuses, which were designed to protect
Grag's electrical nervous system from too great a volt-
age. Then he clamped down the robot's chest-plate.
I
Grag scrambled bewilderedly to his feet.
"What happened? Didn't I make it?"
"No, and it's useless for you to try again, Grag,"
Curt said somberly. "The Allus' photon-bodies can go
through that wall, but we can't."
"Nothing could go through that cursed torrent of
power, except one of the Cometae!" hissed Otho in baf-
fled rage.
Captain Future suddenly stiffened. He stared fixedly
at the android.
"Otho, you're right! One of the electric Cometae
could get through that wall! I could get through, if I
were a Cometae."
"Chief, what do you mean?" exclaimed Otho anx-
iously. "You surely can't be thinking of ­"
"Otho, the only way for me to slip through this bar-
rier and close the door is to become a Cometae," Cap-
tain Future declared.
The grimness of desperate resolution had come into
Curt's gray eyes. His haggard face was set in lines of
determination.
"There's one thin chance that I could do it," he con-
tinued rapidly. "In the cruciform laboratory where they
questioned me, I saw the converter mechanism which
the Allus use to transform ordinary men and women
into Cometae. I observed it as closely as I could. I be-
lieve that if I could get access to it without their knowl-
edge, I could use it to make myself a Cometae."
"It's crazy!" burst out Otho in a clamor of frantic ex-
postulation. "Even if you do succeed in closing the
door, then you'll be one of those pitiful electric
people!"
"Remember that Simon and I believe we can find a
way to retransform the Cometae back to normal," Curt
reminded rim. "When we find the way, I can become
my old self again."
"But suppose you never find such a way?" said
Grag, aghast. "Then you'd be a Cometae forever."
"That would be no sacrifice if I can save our uni-
verse," Captain Future said quietly. "Anyway, if we
can't find the way to undo that metamorphosis, it would
mean that Joan would have to remain a Cometae. And
I'd want to share her fate, then."
The quiet statement put an end to the objections of
the two Futuremen for a few moments. Then Otho
made a hopeless gesture.
"It's foolish even to talk of it," muttered the android.
"How are you going to get access to that converter
mechanism without the Allus' knowledge? You said
that it was located in what seemed their chief laborato-
ry. Some of the Allus will be there, too."
"We'll have to draw them out of there somehow ­
and at once," Curt said swiftly. "We've little time to
work."
He looked at Grag.
"Grag, you can help divert the Allus' attention. Will
you do it? It means taking a chance they might destroy
you."
Grag uttered an offended growl.
"What do you mean ­ will I do it? Have I ever re-
fused to take chances? And aren't you yourself going to
take the craziest chance of all?"
"Then do this," Captain Future instructed the robot.
"Make your way back out to the entrance of the citadel.
Set up a big uproar there at once. Start smashing every-
thing you see. That should bring all the Allus in the
citadel. Try to keep them out there as long as you can."
Grag's photo-electric eyes gleamed with understand-
ing.
"I get it, Chief. I'll make a racket that'll go down in
the history of this comet!"
And the big robot, without further discussion, hur-
ried away back along the passageway by which they
had come. Little Eek, his moon-pup pet, went with him.
FEW minutes later, the dim sound of a distant,
banging clamor reached the ears of Curt and Otho.
From the volume of noise, Grag was more than living
up to his promise of creating a disturbance.
A
43
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
Crouched in their precarious concealment, Cuit and
his comrade glimpsed several Allus gliding swiftly
through the inner corridors, in the direction of the
citadel entrance. They passed out of sight.
"That should have drawn every Allus in the place
out there," Curt muttered. "They'd be startled and
alarmed by the fact that someone had entered their
citadel, despite its barriers. Come on, Otho!"
In a hasty run, the tall, red-headed planeteer led the
way through the maze of labyrinthine passages in the
direction of the cruciform laboratory. His remembrance
of the citadel's interior plan did not fail Captain Future.
In a few moments, he and Otho reached the entrance to
the fountainhead of Allus science. A glance inside
showed them that it was unattended now.
Grag's disturbance had quite evidently drawn away
its occupants. The distant clamor of that disturbance
was still going on.
"We've little time!" Curt exclaimed, panting, as they
sprang into the laboratory. "It won't take long for the
Allus to gain mental mastery over even so unfamiliar a
type of mind as Grag's."
He ran to the big converter mechanism in an alcove
which the Allus had utilized to make the Cometae into
an electric race.
Its central feature was a massive, barrel-shaped cop-
per clamber, eight feet high. In the floor and ceiling of
this chamber were set a very great array of clustered,
tiny lenses. Around the copper chamber, and connected
to it `w complex cables, stood a number of totally unfa-
miliar mechanisms, whose purpose was quite unguess-
able.
"Oh, Chief, this is hopeless!" groaned Otho after a
look at the enigmatic mechanism. "We don't know any-
thing about Allus science. We couldn't fathom the de-
sign of this apparatus in days of study ­ let alone in the
few minutes we have."
"That's true," Captain Future admitted tautly. "But
even though we don't know how the thing works, we
may be able to put it into operation. A savage wouldn't
have the faintest, idea how an electric light works, yet
he could turn it on if he found the switch."
Curt was already tensely examining the complex
mechanism.
"The Allus used this machine for just one purpose ­
the conversion of men and women into electric beings,"
he was muttering. "It stands to reason the Allus would
have the thing set to project the correct forces that
cause that metamorphosis in the cells of the human
body. if we could find out how to turn it on ­"
Yet during the next few moments of frantic study,
Curt Newton almost lost hope himself. The science and
mechanics of the alien Allus were completely unlike
those of the System. Even Captain Future, master of
System science, could comprehend almost nothing of
the converter's design.
But he did locate the heavy main cable that brought
power to the machine. Hastily he traced the cable in
search of a switch.
He found no switch. The cable went straight into the
complex apparatus around the copper chamber. At one
point, the cable passed through a square box on which
was mounted a silver disk. But though Curt twisted and
tugged at the disk, it did not move nor was there any re-
sult.
"It looks as though it might be a switch ­ but it can't
be moved," Curt said in exasperation. His haggard face
seas dripping with sweat. "Yet there must be some kind
of power cut-off."
RENZIEDLY he retraced the power cable, but
there was no break in it except that square box and
silver disk. Captain Future felt his hopes sinking fast.
His plan had been too fantastic to succeed, after all.
F
He could bear the distant clamor of Grag's distur-
bance dying down, as though the Allus were overpow-
ering the robot. Few minutes were left now. Curt told
himself wildly that he must not get rattled, he must
think ­
"Thinking, that's it!" Curt cried hoarsely. "That must
be it! The Allus have immaterial photon-bodies. They
could have had these machines built for them by their
Cometae aides, but the Allus' photon-bodies could not
turn on a material switch. It'd have to be a switch em-
bodying a telepathic relay, a switch they could turn on
by thought!"
"Chief, what do you mean?" Otho exclaimed bewil-
deredly.
Curt paid no attention. He was staring at the silver
disk on the enigmatic switch-box. He was concentrating
every ounce of his mental power upon that disk.
"Power on!" he was thinking, over and over.
Something clicked inside the switch-box! The deli-
cate electro-magnetic vibration of Curt's projected
thought had operated a sensitive relay.
The massed apparatus around the copper chamber
hummed with sudden power. From the myriad lenses in
floor and ceiling poured a gush of brilliant blue light.
"We've got it going!" Curt exclaimed. "I'm going to
try it. Otho, if my attempt fails, you try to get away and
warn the System of the Allus' plan. Here goes!"
Before Otho could protest further, Captain Future
stepped into the chamber ­ into the full rood of blue
force!
He felt an awful, instantaneous impact through ev-
ery fiber of his body. Ire reeled beneath the shock of a
force cunningly calculated to effect the deepest molecu-
lar and atomic changes.
There seas a sharp clicking somewhere in the con-
verter's auxiliary apparatus. The blue force changed
abruptly to deep purple. A new, staggering shock ran
like lightning through Curt Newton's swaying body.
44
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
It seemed to him that every cell of his brain and be-
ing seas on fire. Sick and fainting, he reeled against the
side of the chamber. The tinge of the projected force
that bathed him was now altering to green. It was run-
ning through the spectrum in quick, sharp changes.
Captain Future realized dimly that each change was
bringing into play a new frequency of unknown forces.
Each alteration was patterned to break down the molec-
ular and atomic structure of different elements of living
cells, then remold them into new, strange patterns.
Curt seemed swimming in liquid fire, he felt as
though he were breathing flame through his burning
body. The wrenching at his body's subtlest and deepest
structure made him think that his very flesh was ex-
ploding.
The great `naves of sickness and weakness that
came over him began to dissipate. The fiery torment of
his body passed into a strange tingling.
"Gods of space!" he heard Otho exclaim hoarsely.
Curt opened his eyes. He still stood in the chamber.
But the spectrum-hued forces had reached the end of
their gamut and had automatically cut off.
Captain Future looked down at himself. His whole
body glowed! It shone with brilliant electric radiance
that matched the uncanny tingling which he felt in ev-
ery fiber.
"I've done it," he said huskily as he staggered out of
the copper chamber. "I'm a Cometae ­"
He swayed from sick weakness. Instinctively, Otho
leaped forward to support him.
But as Otho's hand touched him, the android re-
coiled with a cry of pain. His arm hung limp, paralyzed
by the electric shock of contact with Curt 's shining
body.
A shuddering horror threatened to dominate Curt
Newton's mind in that moment He had suddenly real-
ized to the full how ghastly a gulf now separated him
from all ordinary humanity.
CHAPTER XV
The Door to Outside
HE distant clamor of Grag's struggle with the Allus
had died completely away by this time.T"Chief, they must have overpowered Grag!" Otho
was exclaiming frantically. "They'll be back here in a
moment!"
The urgency of his cry penetrated through the sick
spasms that still gripped Captain Future. Drunkenly he
staggered across the cruciform laboratory. He grasped a
heavy-metal bar he had noticed amid other tools in a
corner. Then, in an unsteady run, he tottered with Otho
out into the corridor.
His body still felt utterly devoid of strength from the
terrific shock he had undergone. He felt at each step
that he could not make another, but always his in-
domitable will forced him: forward.
His outraged, metamorphosed body clamored for
rest. He told himself despairingly that even if he could
manage to reach the inner court, he would not have
enough strength to do what most be done to close the
door. Yet blind purpose kept him stumbling forward
through the corridors.
They emerged, Curt and Otho, into the central court.
A few yards in front of them loomed the blinding,
crackling cataract of electric flame that walled every-
thing inside the court. With a convulsive effort, Captain
Future pitched forward into that raving torrent.
Stunned, blinded, shocked by impact of inconceiv-
able electric force, he came to a halt in the middle of
the roaring barrier. He was standing in a raging inferno
of electricity that would have destroyed an ordinary hu-
man being in the wink of an eye.
Yet, weirdly enough, Curt Newton felt suddenly
stronger. His tingling electric body was drinking in the
energy that was now its food, from the flood of electri-
cal power in which he stood. He could feel that new en-
ergy seething through every fiber of his being.
"Chief, hurry!" Otho's frantic cry reached his ears.
Curt lunged on, through the wall of electricity and
into the interior of the court. He stumbled straight to-
ward the massive door.
It was surrounded by the bulky, enigmatic pieces of
apparatus which fed it unceasing power from the elec-
tric cataract. But the door itself towered up above ev-
erything else.
It was a massive, arched copper frame, ten feet high
and eight feet wide. Inset around this frame were six-
teen bulging, complex coils, linked by baffling com-
plexities of wiring to the mechanisms which fed them
power. Curt knew that these were the magnet coils
whose intersecting fields set up the constant space-
strain that held the door open.
But it was the door itself at which Captain Future
wildly stared, like a man turned to stone.
"God!" he husked through stiff lips.
It was not an expletive of astonishment, but a
prayer. He, first of all men, was looking through a rent
in the fabric of the cosmos into the outer abyss. He was
looking Outside!
The arch of the door framed darkness. But it was no
darkness such as Captain Future had ever seen before.
It was the murky dusk of a world whose light is too
alien for human eyes ever fully to discern.
That murky twilight shrouded a scene that no human
gaze could entirely comprehend. For the world into
which Curt Newton gazed was a world of the Outside,
where there are four dimensions instead of three. And
he, a three-dimensional creature of a tri-dimensioned
universe, could not receive clear sense-impressions of
such a world.
45
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
HERE seemed to be a city in the murky dusk of
that Outside universe, But its buildings were of a
fantastic geometry that defied reason. Those black
structures rose from slender bases and mushroomed
outward like giant, angled black fungi growing upon
slender stems.
T
The streets of that mad city were all perfectly
straight to the eye. Yet each of those streets returned
upon itself to form a circle, in insane defiance of three-
dimensional geometry. The perspective of the black
city was that of a surrealist nightmare, for the most dis-
tant of the mushroom buildings bulked far larger to
cum's eyes than the nearer ones.
Most ghastly of all were the dark creatures who
glided in troops and throngs through the straight-circu-
lar streets of the Outside city. Their bodily outlines
were vaguely like the silhouetted shadows of the Allus
whom curt encountered. There was the same blood-
freezing suggestion of serpentine bodies and limbs, of
faces that were masses of feelers only. But the forms of
those dark citizens of the abysmal city seemed to
change in outline with each movement they made. And
they walked through the walls of their own city!
Captain Future, rooted in horrible fascination by this
ghastly vision into the Outside, noted then the most
hideous detail of all. Through the door, into the murky
dusk of the four-dimensioned city, ran the score of
shadowy filaments that connected the photon-bodies of
the Alfas in the citadel with their real bodies in the Out-
side metropolis!
"Chief, the Allus are coming!"
Otho's distant yell broke the trance of horror that
had held Curt Newton petrified.
He flung himself upon the magnet coils that studded
the arch, endeavoring to tear loose their feed-wires. But
the tough wiring resisted his stamina.
Baffled, Captain Future lifted his heavy metal bar
and thrust it with all his strength into the complex
windings of the lowest magnet coil. He tore and twist-
ed, in frantic haste, until a flash of brilliance showed
that he had shorted and destroyed the coil.
He destroyed a second coil in the same manner. And
now the aperture of murky darkness in the door had
grown smaller. The space-strain that held the door open
was weakening!
"Hurry, Chief! They ­"
Otho's warning cry was suddenly cut short, at the
moment that Captain Future wrecked the third coil.
The dark opening of the door was now but a few
feet in diameter! With mingled fear and frantic revul-
sion at the insane world beyond that opening, Curt
raised his bar to hack at the fourth magnet coil.
"Earthman, stop!"
The mental command rang icily in his brain, and at
the same moment he felt his whole mind and body
frozen motionless. Ire made a superhuman mental effort
to complete his movement, but could not control a mus-
cle.
The Allus had come! Their dark, monstrous photon-
shapes were all about him, beating down his will and
resistance with all the vast mental force they possessed.
"Earthman, you die at once for this attempt."
The most awful thing was that even now, there was
no trace of so human an emotion as anger in the Allus'
mental voice ­ nothing but icy condemnation.
"You have tried to thwart our great work, to close
the door that was so hard to open."
URT knew that he was going to die with the bitter
taste of failure in his mouth. If he'd had but a few
moments more
C
He stood there, frozen with the heavy bar still up-
raised in his hands, knowing that the Allus were gather-
ing their mental force to slay him in his tracks.
"Curt!"
That scream was in a girl's voice. The radiant figure
of Joan Randall had burst suddenly through the electric
wall, running toward him.
Not until later was Captain Future to know that
Querdel and Thoryx had brought Joan to the citadel just
as the Allus overpowered Grag. Not until then was he
to learn that the sudden alarm, which had brought all
the Allus to this court, had left both Grag and Joan tem-
porarily free to act.
To Curt, the girl's appearance was startling as a mir-
acle. And it was no less amazing to the Allus. The dark
masters whirled toward her shining figure.
Their startled diversion of attention: left Curt New-
ton free for an instant of their mental grasp. He felt
strength in his body once more. And instantly he com-
pleted his arrested movement to bring his bar crashing
down upon the door's fourth magnet coil.
The coil flashed and burned out. The shrunken, dark
opening of the door instantly disappeared. The weaken-
ing of one of the intersecting magnetic fields had ended
the space-strain that kept open the aperture in space.
The door to Outside was closed. The filaments
which connected the real bodies of the Allus with their
photonbeings had been severed! The sole link between
two cosmic worlds had been cut in twain.
"Curt, look!" gasped Joan,
The Allus' dark, shadowy shapes still stood all
around them. But nosy they had no movement or life.
Now they were mere clouds of photons, since the minds
that had animated them were forever cut off.
Their shadow-shapes became rapidly more tenuous,
more immaterial. They lost outline, drifted away and
dissolved ­ into free photons, into nothingness.
"Joan, we did it!" Captain Future said hoarsely. "We
closed the door. And they'll never again get anyone on
this side to open it for them. They're penned back in the
Outside forever. They can never loot the power of our
46
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
universe."
From outside the flame-walled court came the tri-
umphant, booming shout of Grag.
"Chief, guess what happened! When the Allus came
rushing here and left Joan and me free, Querdel and
Thoryx tried to kill me. But they didn't!"
"I'll say they didn't!" came Otho's spluttering, excit-
ed cry. "Chief, Grag finished off both Thoryx and
Querdel!"
"Then it's all over," Captain Future whispered
wearily. "The Allus gone, the door closed, and the
tyrants of the Cometae dead."
But Joan Randall stood looking up at him. There
were tears on her strangely shining face as she contem-
plated his radiant, electric figure.
But Curt, you are a Cometae now!" she' sobbed.
"Why did you do it?"
"For the same reason that you did, Joan."
He stepped forward and took her in his arms. He had
hungered for her all this time, tortured by the knowl-
edge that he could not even touch her electric form.
But now that his life and flesh were also electrified,
now that he too was one of the radiant Cometae, there
was nothing to prevent him. And to Curt Newton, it
seemed worth all the agony of that terrible transforma-
tion, to be able to hold her close to him again.
UT there was deep dread shadowing Joan's face as
she gazed up finally in his arms.B"Curt, what if you are not able to find a way of un-
doing the transformation? Then you'll never be able to
leave the comet. You'll have to live on here as one of
the Cometae, never roaming space again."
He looked down at her steadily.
"Joan, I hope I can find the method of reversing the
change, for the sake of the Cometae people. But if I
can't, I wouldn't mind living here the rest of my life
with you."
She buried her face in his shoulder, and her voice
came to him as a muffled whisper. "I'm almost selfish
enough to hope that you don't find the way, Curt!"
CHAPTER XVI
Lost Paradise
URT NEWTON stepped back from the work that
had so intently engrossed him. He glanced around
at the group that crowded the Allus' cruciform laborato-
ry. His shining figure stooped slightly from fatigue.
"What do you think, Simon?" he asked with some anxi-
ety.
C
The Brain, whose strange form had been hovering
beside Captain Future and collaborating in the work,
answered with his usual deliberation.
"I don't know, lad. I think we've got the right combi-
nation of frequencies, but of course we can't be entirely
sure."
There was a pause of oppressive silence in the labo-
ratory. The Allus were gone forever from this citadel,
in which they had plotted to steal the power of a cos-
mos. But the shadowy influence of those alien beings,
about whom so little really would ever be known,
seemed to haunt the somber hails and corridors where
once they had been masters.
Like unearthly monuments to their colossal ambi-
tions towered the big, unfamiliar mechanisms of the
laboratory. And the people in the room felt patently un-
easy.
Beside the Futuremen and Joan, the group included
Marshal Ezra Gurney, Tiko Thrin, the Martian scientist,
and the shining figures of the Cometae captains, Zarn
and Aggar.
Aggar was now the chosen ruler of the Cometae. His
people had acclaimed him as such, in the wild revolu-
tion that had swept away the nobles and their guards
forever when word of the Allus' eclipse had reached
Mloon.
Weeks had passed since then. And during all that
time, Captain Future and the Futuremen had labored to
solve the enigma of the Allus' alien science. They had
disassembled and studied one after another of the dark
masters' strange machines, in the hope of learning a
method by which to reverse the circuits of the big con-
verter and use it for re-transformation of the electric
people.
Curt himself was a brilliant scientist and he had the
help of the Futuremen and of Tiko Thrin. But even so,
he had been baffled. The design and purpose of the Al-
lus' apparatus had seemed unfathomable. It was only by
long, toilsome study and experiment that they had final-
ly made a tentative rewiring of the converter.
"I believe that it swill now project forces of a fre-
quency-pattern to reverse the molecular metamorphosis
and make electrified cells normal again," Captain Fu-
ture said slowly. "But I can't be sure!"
He gazed with a tinge of doubt at the big, bar-
relshaped copper chamber and its surrounding appara-
tus.
"We had to work so much in, the dark," he added,
frowning. "We had to try to understand the designs and
thought-processes of creatures that never even belonged
to this cosmos. And if we've erred and have got the fre-
quencies wrong, this will destroy a man instead of mak-
ing him normal."
Joan touched his arm reassuringly.
"It will be all right, Curt. You've just worked too
hard on it."
Captain Future declared his resolution.
"I'm going to try, it now ­ on myself. I won't allow
another man to take the first chance with it."
"No, Curt ­ you musn't!" Joan cried, her eyes wide
47
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
with alarm. "If anything happened to you, the rest of us
would never be able to solve the problem. Let me be
the first!"
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the Brain.
"Do you think I'd let her?" protested Curt Newton.
"Not in a million years!"
Aggar settled the argument by stepping into the big
copper chamber. The new Cometae ruler bellowed in
his bluff voice:
"It's my duty to take the first risk for my people. Go
ahead and turn it on."
ELUCTANTLY Captain Future opened the switch
that fed power into the redesigned converter. He
and the others watched tensely.
R
Brilliant red rays streamed from the lenses above
and below, to bathe Aggar's massive figure in a weird
aura. They saw the Cometae ruler stagger from the
shock, but he remained resolutely upright.
The real shifted into orange, the orange into yellow,
as the changing frequencies of force ran down the spec-
trum. By the time the hue had reached violet, they
could see that the intrinsic electric brilliance of Aggar's
body was rapidly fading. And when he stepped out of
the chamber, he was no loner a shining figure but a nor-
mal man!
Weak and swaying, Aggar looked down at himself,
held his hands wonderingly before his eyes. A great joy
lit his eves.
"I'm a man again!" he said hoarsely. "I'm an electric
travesty no longer. I'll age and grow hungry and get sick
now, and finally I'll die. But thank the gods, until then
I'll really live!"
Captain Future was the next to undergo the meta-
morphosis. And after that gruelling ordeal, when he too
stepped out as a normal man again, Joan insisted on be-
ing next. When she emerged, Curt took her thankfully
in his arms.
"Now for my people!" Aggar roared joyfully.
"There's not one but won't want to trade back that piti-
ful electric immortality for real life!"
It proved so, indeed. The next days saw a great mi-
gration of the Cometae people along the road from
Mloon to the black citadel. They passed by day and by
night through the copper chamber, until at last the last
of the Cometae had regained normal humanity.
There were feastings and rejoicings in Moon be-
neath the coma-sky. Infants would be born again, and
the cries of children would be heard once more. The
comet people were returning to the ancient ways of
their race.
But Ezra Gurney was worried. He confided his fears
to Curt and the Futuremen.
"How in the name of Pluto's fiends are we fellows
from outside the comet goin' to get back out of it, Cap'n
Future? Our ships are still here, but we can't get 'em out
through that coma!"
"Don't worry, Ezra," Captain Future advised. "There
won't be any difficulty about that."
Nor was there. The great magnet which the Cometae
had built, under orders of the Allus, was now made the
instrument by which their ships were enabled to leave
the comet. It was not hard to alter the magnet so that it
projected a beam of reversed polarity out through the
coma's shell.
Into that beam, one by one, rose the spaceships that
had been held captive so long. And each ship, as it en-
tered the beam, seas flung out with a force as great as
that which originally had dragged it in. Each ship was
hurled through the opening made by the beam in the
coma, to find itself in the familiar void of System space
once more.
The Comet, ship of the Futuremen, was the last of
the craft to depart, for the tearful farewells of the grate-
ful Cometae had been long. But at last the Futuremen
and Ezra and Joan found themselves in space once
more.
"What a relief!" cried Otho, gazing around with
sparkling eyes at the familiar vista of black gloom and
bright stars. "I'm cursed if I ever want to go within a
hundred light-years of any comet again!"
"You'd be back there yet if it wasn't for the help of
my little dog Eek," declared Grag, proudly caressing
the moon-pup that was snuggling in his arm.
"What are you talking about?" cried Otho. "That lit-
tle pest didn't do anything but go into one panic after
another."
"Sure, and it vas Eek's wonderful faculty for getting
scared that guided us through the Allus citadel," boast-
ed Grag. "You didn't see Oog helping us any. He hasn't
enough brains to get scared like that!"
Otho began to rave, and the Brain and Ezra Gurney
intervened. Chuckling, Captain Future left them in the
control room and went back to look for Joan.
E FOUND her in the cabin, gazing intently back-
ward through a window at the brilliant flare of
Halley's Comet. It was growing rapidly smaller as their
ship throbbed toward Earth.
H
To Curt's surprise, he found a glimmer of tears in
her eyes when he turned her around.
"Why, Joan, what's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing ­ I'm just foolish," she murmured. "But
I can't help feeling a little sorry to leave the comet."
He did not understand. Joan looked up at him with
deep emotion in her fine eyes.
"Out here, Curt, you belong to the whole System. I
know you love me, but duty comes first ­ your obliga-
tion to use your scientific powers to help the System
peoples.
"But if we'd been forced to remain on the comet
world, cut off forever from the outside, nothing else
48
Edmond Hamilton ­ THE COMET KINGS
would have come first for us. It could have been a par-
adise for us. But it's lost now."
Curt Newton bent and kissed her.
"Joan, don't feel like that. Some day when our work
is done, we'll find our own paradise. I know a little as-
teroid that's waiting for us. It's just like a garden. Some
day.
49